High fog across the great lakes region

high fog across the great lakes region
i try to land but for the hoes and rakes

this season, i'll sprinkle my criticisms,
toss in a prank if i'm feeling that wry

the sky, where I hover, is the last place
you'd sweep for the source of stank

and when I cry it seems purely natural
to think of me and have a little wank



By Jan

Activity table

i mouthed a southwestern melody
reminiscent of hollywood and
suede fringe costumes, similar to

the counter-intuitive, at times a-
tonal chinese hollywood music,
but without percussion, yet I

wailed my plaintive harmonies
to the west in all earnestness
thinking of their fires and loss


by Donna

Wasted in Good Shoes

sure that's the story of my life
wasted in good shoes because
for what more have I requested

my current job: to create a task
to practice the replacement of
low-info words with high ones.

i feel i could say more but why
who i ask who wants to know
who's not up their ass aloof with

terror. disguised also as disdain
who's not afraid or disdainful?
even the professionals shame

themselves over the inadequa-
cy of their trade to quell the tide
of bullshit the great leveler

doctors blame their own lazy
arrogance inventors their
craven leveraging monetizing

used to be you could ask who
do i see if i wanna put an enemy
to rest answer was your army

now it isn't even alarming when
every store front a font for mur-
der, your own reflection in the

glass could for a moment make
you wonder is that pale beast a
killer or how disdainful at best



Dr. Donna Thong

Take Your Pants Off, Mr. Green Jeans

That tingling at top of head and breathlessness, nonspecific terror
Dogs me from garbage disposal to mailbox and out to the car
The icebergs dropping off: missed tax year due to obama care
The amount I owe exceeds what I'd saved by having an insurer
And I can't get ahead because I can't afford accountants or a lawyer
And if I want to refinance, I'll need that year's return to get out of here
To pay off the down payment from the government I got to stay 5 years
But then almost anyone would pay to get out of solitary
All my friends and lovers i used to call a non-traditional family back there
Spread back into the winds that always caress the desert
From dry air I come to this fungal great lakes misery
At least there's less sun to contribute to my recurrent skin cancers.

by Donna

worker child

have gravy, tenderloin and flair jeans
vinyl case for cigarette pack with
a loop and snap top for the lighter

four to midnight get a break time
with a magazine or paper; maybe
you wrote a letter to the editor

a room with mechanical machines
a room with towering reel-to-reel
tape drives behind formica, buttons

green and red and yellow blinking
reset beepers with timers, and your
whole arm could hold 13 or so reels

this weight on the arms of a ballet
trainee, 13 on each arm, the wrists
having fit through the holes perfectly

the lead operator had a racket going
slapping reset buttons, barking at
us to reset the beeping buttons so it

would look like we were attending
to the reels much more quickly than
we were or possibly could have done

planning to spend the rest of the
night dancing in a club, sweating,
drinking, dancing, cabbing home.



by Hoolie

Smart-ass child with an enormous beard

Smart-ass child with an enormous beard
you seem to appear as well from behind steam

and in your wisdom
have chosen a medallion

to commemorate a playoff
at your neck

you swore the newer technology
did not come with an adapter plug
but of course it did

Sorn Gorn Dorn

sorn gorn dorn
naw tamir
ini stone
way we leaf

tayco stain
ona watu sai
you k hee
butta wa-ai pay

[repeat]

Pharmsupply's Prolabique LipLine Master-Lisp "Lipstickventory" Name Galleys 88rx: lipsticks 2020

• all i get is pretty
• a pinch
• blankets for teeth
• blind fury
• blowers for algernon
• blur
• Bogue R. Dit
• brank-ish
• breeder
• bubbles
• cashed bowl
• category 6
• chipotle wind
• duck-taped pepper grinder
• eyelids of the mouth
• fi'nna
• fish clamp
• go boom 
• great lakes region
• grrrainy day
• hairy
• how devastating?
• indefensible
• lawn salad
• morgue ship
• move-over ripe
• nothingburger
• ocular migraine
• pay me
• perverse motivation
• property value
• ribbon event
• salted slug
• shiny purse
• Showing Green
• slapjack
• smartass
• smoking lines
• so...
• soccer ball
• Sorn Gorn Dorn
• steak
• stitches
• sugar drift
• thin
• topless
  
• torn open
• torrid crepe
• twouldn't
• very devastating
• void
• warm roach
• when
• white on tan
• wrap
• you know, I don't? but thank you

When?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with hate, resentment, exasperation, anger

Sounds come out my mouth or I have to slam a door

And if the door doesn't slam satisfyingly

Heaven help the the the...


Does it matter if I get home early, late anymore-- I mean who is there?

At least at work it feels like I have a purpose or

I am interacting with other human beings

Am I too enmeshed with my dog and and...


The most passionate engagement is with other cars in traffic

My entire body becomes involved in utterances

My heart pounds harder and longer even perhaps than

When when when when?



by Donna

Homeschooled Master Race

I hope I spanked him like his daddy never could.

Thanks for dropping off letter and Shiv book

Thanks for your note, Aunt Jan. Pastor Caviar (see link) could better answer your Shiv question. He is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why I feel highly allergic to "theology."

Perhaps well-meaning Shiv stars can be found in large numbers behind the right-wing politicians that are taking over the world and the same ideologies that Grandpa Jansdaad died fighting in Europe.

Most of the civilized world sees Shivas as dupes to a very dark political agenda that we see being successfully carried out before our eyes as our planet dies and our democracies crumble.

I'll be reading Uncle Jan's letter, but not the book.

Love, Jan

I'm no theologian

I'm no theologian, but I do evaluate human arguments for a living, and I can tell you that neither of yours is anything to write home about.

As regards the wedding, I maintain that an ounce of compassion weighs more than a ton of theology.

I apologize for my own scorched-earth rhetoric on this topic to date, but I hope you wouldn't hold that against Jan.

I've shown up for two of Jan Janzdaad's weddings, and for me that was about respect and love and family. It had also meant a great deal to me when she came for her visit to Chukkachank.

I'm sure I can't adequately explain how painful it is to see and hear your responses, which from my point of view come across as cold, cruel, selfish, petty, and clueless. Admittedly, I got the ball rolling with overwrought, hyperbolic, crass, sarcastic, and disrespectful.

As the only son of your only brother, Jan, how many favors have I asked of you? Is there mistake or misdeed I have the power to put right that could help persuade? Weren't you supposed to say something to us back in WD93 like "If there's ever anything..."?

I'm going to suggest to Jan that, if your attendance really is important to her, that she call or write to each of you to let you know. I've begun to wonder how well you understand the importance of this to her. Or perhaps it's me who doesn't understand. Or perhaps Jan won't even come to think about it seriously until after it's too late.

Please understand that in reaching out to you, I mean to reach out for a stronger, warmer, closer, safer human bond between us as people, family members, Americans-- not to try and break your religion.

by Jan

Low-class hillbilly breeder cult

Without that, all the Bible verses in the world are useless.

Maybe you have already changed the lock

WD

Dear Peg:

Please find enclosed what Hoolie described as a copy of his apartment key.

Maybe you have already changed the lock, but I thought he and you would feel better having this back.

You probably agree that it’s probably not a good idea for a tenant to provide a key to a paramour and then to immediately “ghost” that paramour. Few actions piss people off more, I believe, than being showered with affection for months, including the promise of cohabitation, and then one day nothing—you are barred from all platforms, like you never existed.

It’s what the kids are doing these days that passes for breaking up and/or replaces having to have difficult conversations, I guess. I wish I was still a kid.

Of course I started out pissed off, then I was distraught, then suspicious, and now just very, very, very sad.

Maybe Hoolie is also sad and wishes we could start again…. maybe he is diabolical and cruel—I no longer can hazard a guess. I don’t know what to think. (If he was dead, I don’t think he would have taken the trouble to remove himself from TwatsApp).

I’m telling you all this because we’ve met and you seem decent, that you care about Hoolie, and that you seem curious by nature.

Perhaps I am seeking a better understanding about the situation since you may know him better. I am truly at a loss.

Thanks again for helping with my hooptie—I wish this situation were similarly just a big mistake, but I fear it’s just the new normal.

Best regards,



Jan

The next affair

could be a junkie sees a vision how he gonna land
but he don't mind still peaking from the medicine

face plant ass sticking up into the quiet air
won't seem so bad if you keep planning for the next affair



by Jan

Coming out ahead

i still have some of the energy
i got from the bad thing we had
not sure if that means i'm
coming out ahead
because before it started
i was so miserable



by Jan

If it's BPD

if this is a bpd thing
i'm willing to work with you on it
no cancel that
it's intractable and always brief
if that's what it is
i'm sure it's already over



by Jan

Destructive to a relationship

Well i've been waiting with my
phone on my body all day
hoping you would buzz me
this makes me really sad
this freezing behavior is painful and
i don't think i deserve it
it's destructive to a relationship



by Jan

You're fake

You're fake
That's ok
It was fun
Now fuck off



by Jan

bocas colgantes

the night it's dark
our love it sparks
a vision

the rest a tale
our ships they sail
parallel

our breath as one
the legs they run
in tandem

our pasts they're gone
our now it's found
yawning wide




Vikki Brazil

Bricked In Pot Den

bricked in pot den
quarter size kitchen
bitch on a sofa
tricks outta nowhere

winter is six month
dinner posthumous
laundry is downstair
lights blink to it



Vicki Dublin

Psychodrama

[Enter JAN JANZDAAD, JR]

JAN JR: You know, you and mom assume that if you didn't have kids or each other, you'd be animals. So you assume I'm an animal because I don't have a wife or kids.

JAN SR: Jan! Come on now. Let's take a step back here honey.

JAN JR: So you don't deny it.

JAN SR: What's to... Honey? Are you hearing this? Get in here would you?

JANET JANZDAAD [drying her hands with a dishtowel]: I'm hearing some kind of bullshit guys do you want to take it outside like a couple of animals or go and make me some dinner while I sit and pay bills?

JAN SR: Come on honey, let's all sit down.

JANET JANZDAAD: I'm serious these have to go out, and after last time I'm not dropping everything for family psychodrama ever again.

JAN JR: It's all psychodrama Mom, whether you're sitting on the pit group in your sunken living room or acting it all out in the other common areas or even off in some big anonymous city with a bunch of questionable lifestyle choices.

JANET JANZDAAD [rifling through a drawer]: That's a dig at your sister isn't it.

JAN JR: C'mon Mom don't you agree that you feel like you hold the moral high ground just automatically because well A because you are female B because mother and C you are currently married and have kids. ...Mmm?

[JAN JR AND JAN SR MAKING DINNER IN KITCHEN WHILE JANET SITS AT THE DESK IN THE FRONT HALL AND PAYS BILLS]

JAN SR: Get me the box of Panko out of that cabinet son would you.

JAN JR: Italian or... Bad. Stale.

JAN SR: The not-bad one.

JAN JR: Yeah I don't care if you don't wash your hands before you handle those thighs but afterward I would recommend.

JAN SR: Would you?

JAN JR: Yes. 



Vicki London

easy torture button

i cannot take it
i cannot take it anymore
i cannot take it
i'm at death's door

there is a girl
who i want to be friends
but just as girls
as in girlfriends

there is a boy
i want to get to know
but he won't let me in
cuz of his girl friend

they a buddy who gay
so the scene is set
cept i'm not feeling it
if it's shit life is dealing it

i cannot take the rape the
the involuntary celibacy and
there is no in between b'cause
that's where sex happens

cannot, cannot take
the hate i hate
i hate it
cannot take it cannot


Lil' Susan Sontag, Bitch
[repeat]

Obsessive cold medicine dreaming

about an ordinary woman charged with euthanizing the entire world's supply of frozen chicken parts/ familiarity with cactus and manzanita had helped her accept the barren winter figures of the midwest/ but when it came to getting around in the great lakes cities she made connections but couldn't get off/ can now identify a traditional kitsch landmark in each neighborhood while zooming past; however,/ has to arrange for all the workers and trucks from a cell interface munching wings at tollway oases



Vicki Moscovi

Replacement of Predatory Capitalism

Zoloft................................dumbbells

Xanax................................reading paper in bed

Doxepin............................walk up hill

Trazadone......................... reading paper in bed



Vicki San Jose

i can't wait for the right words to come

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be blasted from the environment
it's too late to finely hone my vocabulary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is

i wake up feeling like my face is falling off
a look in the mirror says the same about it
an animal wouldn't think but commence to lick
lame deer or fox will take the next logical step

words don't leave a vacancy more like an opening
for feelings to rush in unabated and with impunity
for crying children who once were shining princes
now nature's truest colors bleed through the fences

a stomping wild feud in a context of deregulation
nobody took a step back and said you're being used
because you had a set of rules and disabused them
you'd got too big to question when the law came in

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be locked in a penitentiary
it's too late to finely hone my obituary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is



by Donna

i'm highly intolerant/ of my environment

 

let's see how can i be not crazy, a guy 

ranting about weevils at the safeway

the baseline behavioral expectations targeted by drugs

my constitution eschews ordinariness like a new liver

because i am special i want to feel special every moment of every day

and i do feel special but too often it's especially allergic to everyone

Lord, i pray: i'm a special but i need to feel like nothing special most of the while

or i get worked up into a pickle thinking your children are idiots and brutes, and i 

forget to smile.

by Jan

I Am Movement, Part 111111

Killing it at the gym. Like when I tried to do one of those high turnaround kicks and totally missed the bag while I was also going off on it with highly focused one-two punches but mostly lots of awkwardly realistic quotidian fighting moves. Never dancing. Brutish, bare knuckled. Ever thought of going off on some guy that really deserves a punch in the face? I don't, normally. But when there is a punching bag before me, I believe I can shred it or myself before I'm done. I can feel the lashing out and I do it. At the thing. Hurts, feels good.

I smell the way gyms smelled when I was young at the gym. These guys have eerily no smell. Though one in the pantheon of personal trainers had apologized for cooking Brussels sprouts in the break room. That is the young person's smell of today, a boiled vegetable. But they seem to feel good inside when you get them talking.

Through a young male character, Elsa Morante writes "TRUE MANLY GREATNESS CONSISTS IN THE COURAGE TO ACT, IN DISDAIN FOR DANGER, AND IN VALOR DISPLAYED IN COMBAT." I was heartened, vainly, by "disdain for danger." That is me. Oh, and I act. But I may always recall the moment this afternoon, ascending a darkened stair, when I muttered, "I've reached a new low." Among lows, this one specifically was a lowness of amorality. It was victory and loss at once. I'd come upon perhaps the perfect revenge: the truth.

This morning I woke up again already sorting through scenarios for appropriate responses to the police threat, which would be quite a coup for his side if we were gaming, which each of us often were. I considered online bullying, for example. So tawdry. Willing to go darker nevertheless, I imagined approaching J during one of his epic play afternoons, with a pseudonym, as a sexy, underage gamer boy. Entrapping him and embarrassing hopefully to the level that I had been embarrassed when he decided that our neighbors and once again, the Rolling Riches PD, should all be privy to my non-threatening albeit a little menacing passionate pen letter, and add to that his stroke of genius in getting it done without having to come into contact at any point with the dirty authorities directly!

The creepy trapping and shaming scheme did bear fruit sideways: instead, I would address my suspicions and indeed evidentiary knowledge of J's untoward interest in little boys and in the idea of himself as a sexual little boy-- not unlike, come to think of it, an MJ of an earlier time. One last letter to the family could be gotten off before any prohibitions to that effect could come my way-- I'd only heard that the dreaded "trigger" (J is such a drama queen, ironically, behind that often dead and inexpressive mug) involved telephone calls, and my own lawyer had only admonished me not to contact J in any way-- nothing was said about the family. And apart from my other scheme, to go and steal all the bagels at his favorite store before he can get there on the day they come in, I didn't think direct contact was a good idea either.

Subj: Pretty sure J is a pederast

Dear R,

I won't be bothering you any further. Just need to tell you that there is a concern about J and his feelings toward young boys. I don't know if he would/ will act or has acted on them, but I didn't think he would act on other weird, inappropriate boundary issues either, and I've learned otherwise. You have grand-kids around, right? That's why I mention it.

As I say, I don't want to bother you or J any further.

There-- that last part I can't describe as-- well, any of the parts maybe as "valor in combat." It was for my own protection, a reassurance that was really more begging her not to let him call the police over this now. I don't know how I would handle that. And I have a choice still. I recognize it. However, especially the way the political fields draw blood these days, there was no rule broken at this point. It meets an objective to inflict pain sufficiently guaranteed to be as much or more than what I suffered. In addition, wouldn't pederasty be a line, finally, that J would not cross as far as welcoming the police, neighbors, lawyers, therapists to know about it? Would this stop everything, finally, in its tracks? Could I walk away as a winner even without feeling like one, or would I wake up the next day already grinding on a new slight or worry that just couldn't go without addressing? Would the anxiety on edge for Officer Caviar's knock on my door in the night be unbearable?

Dawn Warning

Only an alarming bright moon in the winter trees can
Wake me from the sense of no one near this dead end

Wide moon in evenings, sailors feel their feelings
Wide moon at midday, sailors eat their hearts away

We shun the dawn because it will not bring good news
We pace the cage of night only wanting freedom to run


by Reptily

I Am Movement Part 11111

I'm toying with them, like a savvy naughty kitty many times their size that likes the sound of its own little bell. This is the position advancing age puts you into. Exaggerated sense of omnipotence. Yet my suffering is so great that it seems to envelope all of us in the Fellowship Hall of the Lutheran church as a drizzle freezes the parking lot. I walk up to the coffee pot.

How could I not cause a stir. A great big faggot simply cannot just blend in anyway, so you may as well try and manage the reaction rather than freak out about it. What if I just let loose with an unending gay hilarity of shade and cheer. Would this not attract even more suspicion and dread? It's really more me to take on a sort of biker Susan Sontag look and feel.

Are you the coffee person? No, he is. You're the coffee person? You have a commitment? How did you get that? From the secretary? There's a business meeting. You have to go there and talk to the Key Committee. And then what. I want a coffee commitment, so I have to go and appear before a  committee. What happens after that? Do I have to fill out a form? Do I need ID...?

This is when the coffee person, a cute olive blob in the middle of the swarm of straight white maleness beneath the primitive rendition of the Last Supper but many times bigger on the apse-like wall that stretched around us all, broke down and smiled a little giving me the benefit of the doubt that my affect was dry humor rather than killer-y. Every one of the enrobed and slightly crazed looking gentlemen sitting half-circle at the Last table were lightly-tanned Scandinavians and none of them was an easily identifiable Judas.

I'm thinking about the great power/ great responsibility ratio and how yes, I will probably start pissing these guys off more and more the more they get to know me, and that will provide them an opportunity to work their programs, after going off on me in one way or another, coming back to apologize/ 5th-step me, and the process would begin again, but that would be how I-- a way into having a relationship with these men, like the lovable punching bag maybe it could be.

Or I feel like I could drive these men insane if I wanted to. Really push them to their limits at least as much as I have a whole string of men, many of which I was able to work on most deeply in the confines of our own homes. In. Sane. I shared in keeping with the Persistence theme that sure, I think I've been persistent and steadfast, I haven't picked up a drink in 7 years in spite of X, Y and Z happening, making it as exotic and dramatic as I can so they all are secretly wanting my transgressive but glamorous experience strength and hope. How I'd accidentally almost married some autistic guy and he called the police on me when I slammed the door too hard. How he kicked me out suddenly but only after he already had somebody else lined up and in operation. How he had his neighbors call the cops on me when I called him on the phone too many times. How he'd kicked me out and ended up under the power of drunken landlords who proceeded to also kick me out. How I'd ended up in Chukka Chank wanting to just find a safe place to burrow in and be safe after all that had happened. How I wanted to buy a gun today because if the cops were going to come and try to drag me off to jail from my home in the middle of the night, I will have a way to prevent that from happening.

I Am Movement, Part 111

That was J. I was right! That X of his is up to no good, and I think it's time to call the police! Do you remember when we were walking the Circle yesterday and we saw him pull up with his driver-side mirror all taped on and slide a suspicious package into J's mailbox!?

Darling you look a little funny when you're angry in your pussy hat. Were you at another march?

[FEELING HEAD, REMOVES PUSSY HAT] Don't try and distract me. J is just so special and so nice-- like a crazy-smart savant child!

He's in his late 50's.

Listen to this. That asshole X of his called J. 100 times.

Whut? My God. Are we... are we in danger?

[PHONE RINGS, COUPLE STARTLE-REFLEX IN UNISON]

Oh. Maybe it's Officer Caviar.

So you already called the police.

Just with an initial report.

Of what?

Probably just criminal stalking, but possibly a bomb or bomb threat.

Whuh-whut?

Hello?

This is Officer Scrum Caviar from the Rolling Riches PD. Yeah that suspicious package you had the bomb squad come over there for turned out to be a letter from the boyfriend or whatever.

You mean the X. He is not welcome in this neighborhood.

Well Ma'am...

Someone who calls someone 100 times? His voicemail was completely full.

Do you know why your neighbor didn't answer the phone, or why he did not contact us himself?

Oh he's too distraught. And out of town. He's put me personally in charge of keeping an eye on the property while he's gone. There are definitely some criminal damages going on here.

Well from the letter it appears that the X is trying to revisit the history of his relationship with J, which appears to have only recently ended. We see this kind of quarreling a lot, oh who are you going out with now, must be a whore, all that kind of thing. The seniors these days are really worse even than the young ones on that score. But of course it can always lead to murder, torture, or mass violence with bystanders being injured as well so better safe than sorry.

Officer Caviar, I have here in front of me an instrument, a precisely worded legal instrument in which a trigger has been installed, and the trigger is set to start off a chain of actions that cannot be stopped once set in place. It is a set of instructions from J., a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, who only wants to see justice done and peace restored to our neighborhood.

Actually, he's been living on disability for decades.

How would you know that?

Another neighbor mentioned it to us. He inherited money from his parents to buy that house. Though he does seem very smart.

The instrument states that the X must be warned immediately to cease and desist.

Well what I can do is just give him a very stern talking to, and I think he'll...

I hope so, officer. We are in possession of a written legal instrument devised by J's lawyer at great haste just this evening that includes a trigger clause. If there is one more call made to J's number by the ex, this must trigger the official request for a restraining order is to take effect at that point. I can fax that over to you right now using this... contraption on my phone, I... haha! I'm getting so old, I...

Haha.

Well, I'll bring it by tomorrow and pick up that letter to pass along to J. 

I understand, Mrs. Pu...Hat... Citizen.

[ALL LOOK DOWN AT THE PINK PUSSY HAT IN HER HAND WITH THE WORDS "PUSSY HAT" SEWN IN]

My husband Lucas would like to have a moment.

Officer Caviar, thank you for your service. I am just wondering if there are any precautions we should be taking. And to think we spoke directly to that "X" guy during our holiday luminaria participation drive!

Well sir, I can assure you that there are no further precautions that you will need to take in that I will-- I didn't want to put it to your wife that way of course, but I will call this asshole at night, in his own home, and scare the living shit out of 'im. That usually helps them see a better way.

I Am Movement, Part 1

It's a little hard to organize my thoughts while pressing Call, then Disconnect, then Call again every 40 seconds or so. I was able to drive while doing that yesterday because I have the Bluetooth controls embedded in my steering wheel, and driving gives you the feeling of getting a job done even when you are just sitting there staring ahead of you at crispy acres of cornrowed soil, ashy and devoid of snow during this other-worldly warm January week in the Great Lakes Region. I and so many others may have just stayed home otherwise.

Yesterday it was also quite sunny, so I thought I had a good chance of finding my ex and the new boyfriend perhaps out on the driveway with one of the garage doors open and a barbecue going, or in the back yard behind the iron fence he'd put up all around the tree line for my dogs after we picked out that house on the wooded lot together only 2 short years ago. In case I didn't find them, I had a padded manila envelope all stamped and sealed with an SASE enclosed (remember those?) to drop in J's USPS mailbox up at the top of the driveway on the street for him to answer the questions I've been trying to get him to answer for days now by calling and emailing:

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WHOSE ANSWERS WILL HELP ME MOVE ON

1) Did you know him before you kicked me out?

2) Did he encourage you to break up with me?

3) Who is it-- the foot fetish guy who gave you dark socks to wear? The scumbag therapist in St. Dick? Someone from the group I introduced you to?

4) Why didn't you spend Thanksgiving with him? Why did you come to my family's gathering instead and allow my mother to give you a welcome-back kiss?

5) Did you also have sex with M's friend in Oakland? You know, the guy sitting across from you when we had my colleagues over for maiale al latte?

6) Who else, how many others, did you have sex with during the time we were together?

7) You always said that the one other serious relationship in your life, supposedly, ended because he “cheated” on you. Was it really the other way around? Did you cheat on him?

Please respond asap. Consider it a last merciful act so that I can let you go. I believe these questions are lingering because you do not conduct yourself or communicate normally with other people. I just need some closure and some answers, J. You can at least do that even though you have not thought to apologize to me.

And I didn't find them, even at two of J's favorite forest preserves for taking walks on days exactly like yesterday. When I pulled into the parking lot at the first one, an advertisement for a "SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE" jumped out at me from the glass case where the trail map and nature notes can normally be expected. Though there was no sign of J's car, they could have taken the boyfriend's. Out on the trail, it appeared to be a normal day with neighbors and dogs, but these were no longer my neighbors, fact of which created an out-of-place, dreamlike, this-is-wrong feeling, and I was using my own dog only as a prop; she would have been happier on our regular route around the new neighborhood in our new house at the end of a dead-end street; there are DEAD END signs both as you enter my block and when you get to my house, which is next to a park, which has a large red/white striped barricade posted with the DEAD END sign at its center.

What was I going to do had I run into J. and his whore? Everything was planned. "Oh. So this is him. What's your name? Mike? Hi, Mike." We'd be standing in a triangle on the paved section of the trail, stepping aside politely for the occasional bicycle. "Did you know that you are not able to satisfy J. sexually as well as I can? No? Ask him. That's what he told me." This was actually true. During the initial telephonic confrontation, J. had confirmed as much. Everything I'd planned was carefully based on either truth or conjecture, no lies. "So you must have a very tiny penis." I was trying to fashion my behavior, which was seeming boringly garden-variety OCD, and in a teenage way, to be more palatable to myself by framing it more in my mind as a crusade of virtuous comeuppance like Karen Silkwood or Norma Rae or even the tear-laden journey of a wronged single mom, the dogged search for answers by the mother of a murdered girl (as recently seen on True Crime Weekend Bonus Murders). And all of those scenarios are true in their way, even the murder, which was the assassination of my plans for the rest of my life. "And what do you plan to do when J. does this same disservice to you? Are you sure that he's not already letting someone else fuck him when you're not there? Did you encourage this? Bad stuff comes back around."

But no luck yesterday and no luck today. I drove back around the circle around the tree where we'd been invited for a Memorial Day picnic which had been cancelled due to rain and a huge rotted section of the ancient oak had crashed down into the grassy area exactly where we would have been sitting in our lawn chairs and left deep wounds in the soft black soil. The envelope I'd left in the box was still there from the day before. So maybe he'd left town, maybe with the boyfriend in tow? As I started pressing redial on the steering wheel again, my poor little bitch just laid in the back seat with her nose between her claws, appearing to disapprove. She was air-throat crying. I myself had waken up crying for days, but it felt great to be off my meds and feeling my feelings for once: nauseous with hurt and disgust and fear for the future, dizzy with doubt and alarm at whatever it was that I was doing.

One way we got here was because J. has Asperger's, and though he is rarely driven by cruel intentions, he often hurt my feelings unintentionally due to communication and self-awareness issues. Because I knew that he knew I knew about his strange proclivities, I felt emboldened to go ahead and exercise my own, like my love for repeating numbers. Yesterday, I noticed that I had called J. 67 times, which was a botheringly random number. I thought about taking it up to 69 times, but what was that supposed to mean in this context? J. and I never once did that, and sucking, in fact, was just not a main feature of our love life. One reason that I took such a hard hit on this one was that after a lifetime of sucking and getting sucked, with J. I had been able to settle into what seemed like what must be a very normal routine for married couples, the seamless bi-weekly fuck you don't even have to think about. No worries on how long it will take you to cum or whether or not that will happen; no problems with all the safe-sex contraptions and complicated workarounds; J. had taken great pains to make sure I was tested thoroughly and even questioned my doctor in person about the results before he would even consider letting me in on a world-class butthole that was the result of decades of semi-professional bicycling and constant running from bullies at recess before that. So the only choice I could think of after 69 was 111, and I had even happened to see the lucky 1's (Grand = the elevens: 11:11) as I glanced at my phone on my way out the door yesterday. So I made 42 more calls.

Then today after taking a whole other trip over there, finding the envelope from the day before, going to the forest preserve anyway, not finding his car, still disturbed by my own behavior and even more sad because the sun had disappeared, I accidentally called him 112 times. Even as I made the last call, I heard myself saying, "If this goes over, I'll have to take it up to 222." But I stopped at 112. I am thinking of it as "111 + 1" in that it could mean, "I started at 111, and today it's 112. You know what to expect tomorrow" (as if he is quaking in his boots because he cares exactly how many times I am calling beyond the fact that I am calling too much). My other way out of having to make 110 more calls to get to 222 was the switch I'd made to letting every call today go to his voicemail. This threat was a little meatier because it might mean that if I continued doing that every day, J. would have to spend a lot of time going in and erasing my blank messages so that other callers would not encounter the "mailbox is full" message. I had already gotten to Mailbox Full at call 67, but I couldn't stop there for reasons that I have already described above.

How can someone move to your state from a completely different state, say they want to marry you, buy a gigantic house and put up a fence for your dogs in the back of it, join you for six weeks teaching summer sessions at a school in a third state, include you in the hospital stay and talks with the doctor during their brain surgeries, recovering alongside you, supporting you in your own substantial struggles with work and health, and then turn out to be a total fucking boundary-less skank with other men?  Someone who does not even talk in bed? How can you plan against or protect yourself from a person like this? They let your mother kiss them on the face and welcome them back into your life and then go the very next day to their non-aforementioned lover? As I pulled away from the last spot I could think of where they would have been walking, my little bitch made a sigh, and I started thinking less about J., and after having sat drinking coffee and pressing the Call and Disconnect buttons for most of the morning, it was more about just getting to a place now where I could pee.

Ah, why here's a kibo outside the wildlife museum. I'll just pop in there. Ah. There in the darkness, a light goes on. Men standing in and around the kibo acting casual. Now I know where the boyfriend came from. I can almost hear him now. I say, "Jon, you've been tricking with guys at the kibo in the preserve?" And he'll say, "Can't say I didn't invite you along for those walks. You were just too grumpy." Actually he would never say that. He probably wouldn't say anything at all. Why should he, a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, have to say anything-- ever?

I Blame the World

If you must know, then yes, I blame the world and everyone in it.

I blame the world, and I blame my parents. I don't think, and I speak

without irony, that my life is the result of my own choices either

principally or even significantly. I see geese narrowly missing

skeet practice, lions bringing down gazelles. I blame every mother

fucker with their brights and fogs on. But it's the world does it to

them. Ticking clocks, running out of time. Balls fall into cups over-

flow onto paper disintegrates releases arrow shoots an agent into

a system reacts spinning sending centrifugally innocents into

buildings or sand traps. Fuck them and fuck you. This is not my

problem. I didn't make it or start it or egg it on. No one is that

profound. So is it God I should blame, just in case there is one?

I'd say yes, add Him to the list, and half the politicians; add those

who were less deserving than I but gained more treasure and/ or

happiness; yes, less deserving: they deserved less. I deserved

more. Put them at the top of all the blame only because it might

just be more painful for them there. I, too, then, am to blame,

but only as blame can be shared with every other goddamn mol-

cule that's ever come into contact with sod, meaning soil, except

for the sodomites, because they alone have made right choices.



by Donna
"Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh."

Self-destructive pattern

Hire a witch doctor and a head shrink.

Witch doctor is a fucking Pakistani fucking homophobic bastard, and the

Head shrink is a clueless, suburban, 20-something, blondie twinkle-face.

Force them regularly and unfairly to encounter the limits of their abilities over the course of 2 entire fucking years.
 
Drive for hours in heavy street traffic each week getting back and forth to the appointments.

Pay thousands of dollars, a measurably consequential portion of your income, for the privilege. 

= self-destructive pattern.

Love, Jan

Yesterday, my sister announced she is getting married to C. and showed me her diamond ring. This made me feel like killing myself, so I decided to do some more research on Asperger's Syndrome (YOU):

    Aspies hurt other people's feelings unintentionally.

    Aspies are not aware of social conventions that prevent feelings from getting hurt.

    Aspies are not aware of how their own behavior affects other people's feelings.

    Aspies feel bad when they learn they have hurt someone.

    Friends, lovers, spouses of Aspies get their feelings hurt a lot.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes can't take getting their feelings hurt so often.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes blame themselves when their feelings are hurt.

    I am not going to blame myself. I am not abusive. I loved you and wanted to marry you. I wanted to help you.

    You have Asperger's Syndrome, and I don't blame you for that.

    You refuse to admit you have Asperger's. I DO blame you for that.

    You hurt me over and over.

    Your behavior is not normal.

    This causes you a lot of pain, but it causes me MORE pain.

    I really do hope that you move away so I never have to see you again.

Love, Jan

River of snot

**the photo has been removed by the Mthyuh Preservation Society** assholes

so clean, jesus up with the olive oil
fresh clean robe and falling curls
bought myself flowers and steak

on the threes it was working well
caught a nice snap stepping from
the bath, same idea from back when

and there were bon-bons, and fury
but all for no one but customer
service reps and phantoms from then

already wintry indoor dusts and their
mysteries are starting up the 3-month
river of snot again, trip to springtime