Tuesday, December 21, 2021

I could have been lidderly all the way into the next hexagon by now

apart from the especially remarkable moments their days kept unrolling easily and within the scope of relative safety

they moved on from one another's disasters grew to accept or tune out any resulting disfigurements

there was some pressure from the many many feet that still could be yet to drop

but this was a familiar and traditional pressure against which generations had developed mechanisms

their story was to live under new pressures develop new mechanisms or 

survive to tell of their sufferings

for example those ones who'd fallen through The Crack 

learned to live in their bodies but in our reality

but they had to come together in a circle

and talk about their putative worlds

they turned out to be places where suffering had a different definition but one that they could hardly remember


Periodical Insight
Vol IX.7.78

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Today's dog walk

i'll try not to rhyme eye and sky, but

here's the situation: there are vibrations

there are lightning flickers but also high

wind cloud smears malfunctioning

xmas bulbs against houses and a double

ocular migraine. depending on which

way i look, various fields are pulsing


another creepy but not physically un-

pleasant day in a strand of sometimes

horrifying serendipities weatherwise

which lifts you neckways off of the

plain hard sand of quotidian worries

that you'd normally be depending on

natural phenomena to free you from


by Jan

Friday, December 10, 2021

Duddle-dee duh/ duddle DEE-dah

when i can't think
to the music 
better to sink 
what do you say?
then we can be
in the same groove
bobbing away
in the venue
letting it take
up all the room
then we can feel
at our leisure
when i can't see
to the future
better to be
in the future
then we can find
what there is here
and we will know
what to leave here
and we can think
to the music 
better to sink
what do you say?
[loop]
 
 
 
by Peg

Monday, December 6, 2021

Bothsidesism

to the poor or persons in the past i suppose 

i live the luxury of a most debauched king

while to my peers i seem a pitiable thing

 

the afflicted find fault in my astonishing 

complaints; the threadbare really seem 

to care about the level of my waste


prejudice, from the right and from the

left, from every gender camp and 

disinformation factory, theme, caste


 
 
by Jan Jansdaad 
(Jan's dad)


Sunday, November 28, 2021

Snub

you don't know if you'll live throughout the night 

and you're watching a rom-com? you can deduce

that all prospects are tongue in non-literal cheek

or that your level of acceptance is very high

or that it's depression giving up disassociating

and probably not production values, star power

a sudden insistence on minding the moment?

a pain strip that overlaps takes on is informed by

the stack of strips below it, a translucent 

suspension of anecdotes, quips, romans a clef,

bulleted lists, self-pranks legends memoir

and these legs can take you from sofa to desk

and a desk can take and make havoc with an arm

and an arm is all it takes to stop an action or

refuse the sorts of service lacking which could 

mean the end of a long but very young evening

it's that you're tired and afeared of a rapacious

environment which can be slowed cannot be

slowed by inaction but can be snubbed as one

would snub an earnest lover with no worldly

blame apart from the ancient code she arrived

with, no more agency than gravity and water

 

by Reptily

Sunday, November 21, 2021

345

decaying cedar lodge in eastern prussia

clump snow dropping from high branches

crystal blue sky


trying not to boil it down into an unfair 

and ugly blob or not even trying just

not doing that you know?


presents from four-score christmases

choke the closets and litter the plank floors

they're real planks that they'd cut from the

surrounding woods and made floors of them.

 

they were watching a season of Star Trek in

which the flow of the plot kept getting 

stopped dead when each character had to 

turn to the other and affirm their goodness


there's also a lake and silently dipping mallard 

groupings, legit choppiness or gently rolling

in the moon, natural waters that are filtered 

and stocked, ballooned over; still nature was

winning here, fungus by mouse by respect


by time no not by time. in the same

measure of time there can be renovation.

by age no not by age each age is just a 

fashion. there is only movement, only 

action, else there would be preservation.


by Reptily




Saturday, November 20, 2021

Unangry

they say never go into a situation angry or you'll lose

but if your spirit is angry all you'll do is suppress your

anger and not be unangry

that's how breaking the rules becomes a spiritual

pursuit especially if you have to pay off your

transgressions

and if not are you humbled by

rue?

the day after a full moon i felt and discarded emotions

rocked the bottom of the steering wheel

snuck nicotine vapes near a hospital's elevator banks 

found the only saturday medical supply outlet

marveled at aisles of crisp alarming packages

how family characters rise to an emergency 

in direct proportion to the value of the afflicted

or sink in unison if there's even only 

one who can't hold her shit

 

by Donna


Dog pees on rug

in one full-moon day:

ran out of my vape pen

with an hour and a half to go before the

tow truck

who said i couldn't ride with him because

he'd brought his girlfriend

the stepfather says:

pull it up right from the middle

give me a snuggie

and the woman with the broken hip says:

home healthcare workers

what for?

and the jury says: 

let him go

and half the people realize

all we need is lies

dog pees on rug

Sunday, October 24, 2021

wound porn

there was a four-foot tube going from my nostril to my small intestine, and i pulled it out, twice, once while vomiting. 

i figured out how to work some of the blinking, sucking, beeping machinery, and when i'd had enough, i switched it off. 

i took the loudly ticking clock down from its high place on the wall and removed its battery. 

i signed a waiver of liability so that i could be allowed to sit up in bed.

i told them i wanted ativan, and a full milligram, not a child's dose. 

i allowed a young male nurse to wrap me with a vinyl leash and walk me up and down the corridor. 

i became conscious well into a narrative with a daisy miller-like subplot. 

there in trinidad and tobago, i gave her one more chance to choose between the hipster boyfriend and the security of her father.

i drifted in the streets after they made their choice and moved inland, toward the volcano. 

i evaded pickpockets and thugs in a dark terrain of campfires, our shadows splaying against the outer city walls.

i got a ride in a jeep full of local teenagers speaking tagalog.

i cooked a pork shoulder in an aluminum pan at an outdoor community kitchen.

i slept in a flophouse full of mattresses in wall alcoves and flashlights and men.

i met the girl who was going to solve the problem of the tracking wires embedded in everyone's eyeglasses or canes. 

i was desperate to find an overall solution, but i could only wander from situation to situation. 



by Donna

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Repast

watching her dance plays
all their muscle keys
her inner commands
can freeze them in place

but she can't reach me
the pitch of my jib
bends off her song
and won't let me on

my breathing, long and
unobstructedly
tacks the vanished spell
only when she's gone

only when alone
can i read her lips
free from the bleeping
moment's disorder

wings sweep on the floor
panic and truth merge
is this not my drug
or not me at all
 
on stolen spirits
please the vacant skull
take time and hurl it
with your polished shoe
 
realization
is after it's through
what's not caught is true
so what have you done? 



by Reptily

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Skeleton parade

i can feel the life 
coming back in
and it's terrifying
as a skeleton

while before my 
past wrongs paraded
before my eyes
now more are on the way

i don't set time
but i did invent it
so to steal it
from the chill of night
 
but the warm of day
is tending light
must i still pay
for not living right?
 
 
 
by Reptily

Friday, September 17, 2021

Smoke crazy

She keeps going out to smoke this
in to smoke that
like breathing except the opposite
she smoke crazy smoke crazy

She went to college and all that
end up like this
in mutually exclusive states
we trial dating while mating

Half the day she's in pain from 
electrolysis
she gets that but not how her 
soul might fit, soul might fit

Lady in the main, second is a
man for this, a man 
much more than any other gender
that's one for you, one
 
she smoke crazy
we trial dating
oh she a lady
and he a man

[repeat]




by Donna

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Lyric for electric organ, fog machine, and choir

Look, i'm touching my scalp, right near the brain
it's an expression of painful humility, vulnerability
 
as i read the prognosis my heart was 
thumping with surprise [begin drum]
 
to do it and feel it at the same time
the answer was always why
 
when it could have been a 
fun time, fun time [begin organ]
 
free, and free is what they hate us for
fire, it's what our lives are given for
we: have no regrets for living on
fire, it's what our lives are given for
free, and free is what they hate us for
we: have no regrets for living on...[fade]

 

Donna Thong
"My name is cool because it's a command."

Friday, September 3, 2021

Any single lover

it's only 11:30
but my night is over
and it won't be getting better

reminds me of the time
i made out with a man
who turned seedy and spent

i'd like time to
be there to make you
want to get to more time

by no means will i
give in willingly to sleep
it must win me over
 
nor will any single lover
dictate my ups and downs
or cause me troubles
 
 
 
by Donna

Thursday, September 2, 2021

can't go back/ have to go back

can't go back/ have to go back
still beat up/ they're on task
boat that spins/ must join in
 
out of doors is a hot griddle
other persons burn too hotly
i can diffuse their iterations
 
from within these walls and
tunnels/ can't stay here/ can't
leave, reaching way beyond 
 
my fingertips what i can feel
is read only/ listening trying 
to jaw the words correctly
 
i want to stay here forever/
this is not at all what i want
too hot/ stay in/ want not



Dr. Donna Thong
Center for Therapeutic Re-credentialing
Rm 409

Television leaked into the vacuum of my inactivity

Hunched over an ancient glory hole in one of their urban sub-baserock ant tunnels, pressing my eye very close, I could see a television. Its sounds and light began to leak day by day into the vacuum of my inactivity. 
 
I can feel my emotions getting on the roller coaster provided and off the one that's in my head and pretty soon, one is just a template for the other, but which is which?



by Reptily

Moral Crimes

The poor make truer friends
or lack of means starts trends
that beg the path of more security
in that the opposite of debt is money.

The rich are fickle and strategic
needing all the more to shirk the tragic
prone to see the emptiness in bounty
but always find the energy to count it.
 
Being in the middle you're suspicious
Poverty becomes your real subconscious
you notice tiny fluctuations
and the moral crimes of rich and poorer nations.
 
 
 
by Reptily

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Sincere Little Face

i was at least gonna 
log in an
leave some pathetic
message to no one

but then i remembered
ye are already damn 
complete in Him
and my song carries on...

i got my grrl with her
little sincere sleeping face an
glowing red nails 
from the rag weed an the
 
biting flies she's ad-
mittedly an animal but ya
could eat her up like a
cannibal and every little
 
move that she makes
is worth a second take cuz
she sleeps by my side an
poses for greeting cards an
 
deals out the faces make a
grown man cry like it's
his own baby child looking
up and smiling missing a
 
tooth but pushing
through the discomfort so she
can be there for you an be
there for you there for you oh
 
CHORUS

my child's got me got my
eye got my face got my
eye got my taste my child's
got me got me in her embrace
my child my child my child

REPEAT



by Hoolie

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Peg's Failed/Anachronistic Do's and Don'ts for Petty Transgressions

  • Just hold the item(s) in your hand and walk out the door with it/them, purposeful but unhurried. Then if stopped, say, "Wow, I guess I spaced out. I want to buy this/these, but I also wanted to compare the price over at [name of other store at mall]."
  • If you must flame while in a hooptie, keep hands well below the dash.
  • If you are trying to get back more shiny coins, choose a teller who seems to be flirting with you.
  • If you have a lighter in your pocket, and there's another one on the table, use the one on the table, and then put it in your pocket. You now have two lighters.
  •  Get the shiny coins up front, but make sure his purse is close by in case he wants to add items or go off menu.
  • Press a dab of his pre-cum between your thumb and forefinger. If it's tacky, use a condom. If it's stringy, you're good!

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Take these to switch up sleep type

story-verbal sleep

itching-layered

many-roomed structure

places on maps

view from grave

view from above

view from a passing conveyance

figures beckoning

bent coupling

generic horror

deeply unasleep

torque of somnolents

conscious paralysis

tandem breathing

ever sinking

scary clear

content bemusement

seeking moments

stranded in time

able yet not able

about the bed

night shrouded

stark light black curtains

sweet avoidance

stolen

form of eating

brain stuff

closest listening

despite discomfort

ring of saturn

bobble head

Monday, June 21, 2021

I thought it was all over and then woke up to a whole other day

Yes, I used to contemptualize everything

like the bitter, curmudgeonly professors at

the beginning of my career. They filled the

smoking lounge with grievances and

plotting, derisive cackling in their blur of

fear. But for some the failure has been a 

tenderizer, the corrosive beating toward a

climax of surrender. Is what I'm hearing.



by Peg

Monday, June 14, 2021

Murder grinder

My face was smeared across all the killings
one of them
killed when he'd temporarily forget how to type
innocence stuck in back corners presented as 
stupidity, passion
a mocking deadly innocence put mildly
nature predating pre-forgiveness
unchanging through ages of moral fashion
 
But when they think of murder they see me
I believe I have to tickle them with it
They feel they need to get all into it
I am this free-channel boatman
skimming along
living my life with all these dead along
keeping my eye on what can change
not what's done.



by Ted

Monday, May 31, 2021

The better form of sight

i like to hang myself by the ankles
over the River Plaque, and swing
and watch the sky rock up and back
 
where nature's harsh incense rises 
from tiny clouds with dark edges
fertility independent of relationships

processes do better without light
blindness is the better form of sight
among internal organs is the eye



by Ilyn
"Short for Illinois"

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Crappy lighter

births could no longer quell my pregnancy
too many selves were building inside me
i can no longer be always in delivery
 
so i bought this crappy lighter to keep me lit all night
i stand vigil for the principal inseminator
like a lover i will greet him and then end his life
 
 
 
by Peg


Wednesday, May 19, 2021

rally

Devotees prepare their villages for the master's arrival, readying the alms and gift bandages. They will drape his cart and his dog with wide loops of marigold heads and tiny copper bells strung together with yak thread. They sit in the sun among the striking shadows of the columns in the dusty main commons with their baskets of wool and wide combs and wheels stringing the marigold heads and singing about Ilyn. 
 
our master rallies through our hearts and towns
always seems to think he's never been
pledging to remember us forever

lord ilyn is a part of nature now
he comes in the spitting rain or gloom of spring
he grips our fingers like a newborn child
 
he comes along on a static summer noon
laughs at our familiar terms of address
drinks our autumn vine from the same 
 
bloody cup and passes it around
until we feel again eternal kinship
some will follow all the way to Mthyuh

Saturday, May 15, 2021

This, here

The shiv will put you into a nightmare you can wake up from as opposed to no-shiv, which you can never wake up from.

I'm on no-shiv. 

I'm sorry. 

Don't sweat it. I was born that way. 

Is that what you were. Born. 

Yeah my mom

I know. Her name is Jan Jansdaad. 

Was. But you're right, we're all Jans.

I wish I knew more exactly how I came to be. The mode of arrival, that is, not conception. 

Whether you came out of a lab dish or a lightning bolt 

I am still coming from there

Either way you are this, here.


Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Turning back

The last rings of sun, with the moon surrendering backward on its rocker: it's a scary light in which to lose your dog. Only the tiny desert vichos can hear Ilyn whistling for Shab. 

Showing up unapologetically late, Shab seems happy to back the cart right up to Ilyn's charred and bloody heap near the decomposed granite pit he's crawled out of. 

Shab gets a kinky cord of hemp wrapped in his teeth and pulls, and the door on the back of the cart falls off. 

Ilyn then has to figure out how to get into the cart with the least amount of pain. After all, he is not a martyr. 

A quiet darkness surrounds the pair except for just beneath Shab's hooded forehead, where his eyes are lending just enough red light to see the flecks of cement dust in the air. They would turn all the way back around to the sun again before they'd even find their trail.


Monday, May 10, 2021

Paroxysms of sincerity

Jan Jansdaad is driving along and thinking what if I lost this hooptie. What if anything happened to it at all. We'd be on our way to the next lower rung of economic class hell... 

Wait a minute. I'm back. All the while La Chama must have been leading me towards a hole to The Crack. She knew I'd have to return, at least for a moment, just to see. I see I've been to pharmsupply-- I've got a live bag of hopinaskippina. I'm headed home, for whomever I find there. But what about my daughter-- will she take my place? I just wish we could be all together and safe with descent health insurance. 

Then there is a prick near the dew claw. Lloyd? You're drawing my blood. 

Not at all, Mrs. Jansdaad. I'm just cuddling here next to you while you nap. 

Jan? 

I know, Mom. He's from pharmsupply just like daddy said. 

Now wait just a minute, ladies. 

You're only here to steal our genes and spy.

Oh I'd say it's been quite a lot more than that. I can take you back. Get you reformatted. You'll be an in-between type, like La Chama. Small enough to fit in human structures. Strong enough to

To power one of your slave K's with my brain, as your slave. 

It's not like that anymore. We're finding new ways to

To use our natural bodily processes for the greater appetite. Our suffering is inconsequential. 

Ok, you know what, you guys? I am getting really sick and tired of walking around with a completely open heart to each of you as persons, and you know I kind of feel like that Begging Rajah, with so much, so much to give, and... no hands. You just scheme to cover up or push your strong identities. What about my purpose? Who am I?

Both Mrs. Jansdaad and Lloyd avert their eyes and tighten their lips. One concept they can agree on is the adorability of Jan and her paroxysms of sincerity.


Sunday, May 9, 2021

The Begging Rajah

You say that Ilyn is Shab's "new" master. Who is the old one? 

You might have noticed that on Shab's back is an empty saddle made of the finest mantua. It was the seat of the Giving Rajah who became the Begging Rajah but is now the Perpetually Sobbing Rajah. He was so giving of his riches that he even tried to feed gems carved as lady bugs to a living monster poinsettia, which of course bit off his hands. For a while, the raja tried begging from the back of his formerly proud and now ashamed dog, Shab, but it was no use. Shab's eyes only began to glow red with the shame of his master's indiscretion. 

Finally the begging rajah was able to give up begging and live here in this place of death and peace and learned to take on sorrow as his only sustenance. If you look over there in the shadow near the gate, you can see him holding himself up in his grief and sobbing against the stones, having just seen Shab wander off once more with the cart and the redundant saddle. 


Passion of Ilyn

With La Chama off to help Mrs. Jansdaad find herself, Jan and Lloyd find themselves wandering across the stained plaza the morning after Night of Shiv Days. There are two kinds of stains between the cobblestones: the blood of zealots, and the purplish marks left by the shiv left by the K's. Some flekes have scraped it up and made shiny coins selling it; others go on to sell their stories of being scarred by it. 

Lloyd and Jan enter a random alley which becomes an artery that leads them out of the town center and into the Graveyard of Gay Guys. They buy some sausages of vicho and tubes of vine from a vendor and rest against an ancient tree. 

Soon, there is a groaning squeak, and then a thud. And then again, and again. Uninterrupted in their chewing, they watch a dog and an open cart pass into their line of sight, headed for the far stone gate leading out to the countryside. 

It's Shab, says Jan matter of factly, with her new sense of knowledge. That cart he's pulling is thought to have been constructed before the invention of the wheel. It's rotors are hewn square, so they buck upward at the corners and lurch forward coming down on the straight parts. Shab seems to pull it effortlessly, his feet barely touching the ground, if at all. He'll wander in that wasteland until he sees Ilyn surfacing through the rocky scrabble. Dogs think anything that moves must be alive, and if it's alive it must be food or a savior, and that's how he finds Ilyn every time. Shab finds Ilyn and then pulls him along in the cart, which, in all its heaving and jangling, is the only rest that his master will get until the next ascent, the same ascent, to Karihr-Kesh. 

It's reassuring in a way, says Lloyd. Ilyn seems to suck up a lot of the pain around here. Is that what he's for? 

It might be an unintended effect of his passion, answers Jan.

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Mthyuh, Tray of Ashes

Ilyn sprints past his single-file train of devotees on the jagged trail up chank to Karihr-Kesh, the sacred springed platform jutting out over Mthyuh's hot mouth. 

Standing at the edge of the Kesh, Ilyn drops his robes and bells and marigold garlands until he is strikingly naked and white-grey because of the scars. His skin is scars upon scars from head to feet. Only the brilliant red hair can break through the gnarled scar surfaces and stand out against the blackened rock faces. 

His hair and cement-white bottoms of his feet are all the eye can see until he seems to be consumed in the black crustiness of the lava below. The devotees crack rocks together and blow into stone pipes and sing.

Monday, May 3, 2021

Charnel nest

A charnel nest sometimes grows around the entire top of a chank as fresh bones are added, wet. They dry while lashed to the rest of the structure with the sinews of the worshipers' bodies from which they came.

Off course

They've chosen an open volcanic meadow in which to relax and reflect: a topless Chamatilly on a jet-black carpet woven by the Virgins; and Jan on her elbows, matching flaps of her wing tissue loudly snapping and billowing above like castle flags.
 
You see Jan in our culture we say that life is not only ours to feel and act as we see fit, but also to be custodians of the franchise. Duty, honor, sure, come into play. But I prefer to see the responsibility as owed to a future self, one who might suffer needlessly without my sustained devotion. Don't keep track of time, but keep feeding the Mthyuh every day. She is life just as we all are life. 
 
I miss my husband.

And you should surely go to him as soon as you have come to terms with the risks that will mean for the both of you. There, I am like a tethered freak who dances for rice. There, Mthyuh Protection Society have become complicit with Pharmsupply to round up our sisters to dissect and disperse and corruption. You'll always be watching your back. So go there, as soon as you have allowed for the possibility that your brain will be splayed open in an incubator and that your body will be thrashed by trees and slammed into chanksides, that Remote Tissue Decisioning will turn you into a great big toy for all the teenage sons of all the ministers in High Chank. 

I can try Hopinaskipinna. Or I'll make a nest for Jan and me and bring him whatever he needs. 

Of course you can. Of course you would. Or all of it will veer off course. 

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Sixty times I circled

sixty times i circled
casualties mounting
watched from every angle

my sisters' teeth were flashing
in blood and spittle
history was attacking

virgins stood on balconies
sharing the dread
of my own abilities



by Jan

Friday, April 30, 2021

Stonecakes

I saw them getting very near, just over the Graveyard of Gay Guys, and decide to either turn sharply downward or circle the plaza. 
The first one to dive hesitated then dropped her shiv egg in the second tureen. 
She turned sharply upward as the splash skidded across the first row of rubber and umbrellas. The crowd did little more than gasp. There was a drunken catcall from among the sidewalk tables set up behind the bars set out from the sidewalk and the shops. "Shills!"
Soon there were so many K's circling the plaza that it looked like a solid wall of scale and pynco-fur was undulating in place. 
Another K dove for the second pool, and the splash was slightly different, enough to send a tiny dot of molten matter onto the bare forearm of a tourist in a parti-colored hat. At first she shrieked, but realizing her fortune, laughed just as loudly, then shrieked and sobbed, than laughed, maniacally, again and again as the spec burned more deeply into her flesh. It would only turn out to be a tiny chunk of coal.
The next K knocked over the first bowl with its dew claw and sent a mob of worshipers scrambling for higher ground. 
The sight of it drove some of the K's mad, and they began to swoop at the fleke pilgrims on the broken tureen scaffolding, themselves out of their minds with religious fervor. 
Eat me first! Eat me first, I say! screamed a man in a suit from the highest point of the wreckage. A very skinny K dove right at him, scooping him up in her jaws like a rabbit and hurling him high into the air before catching him behind her with her feet, impaling him with six of her eight back claws. She took a lap around the plaza, squeezing her toes and splurting the crowd with blood from her prize before before soaring off to a nest, presumably. 
I can't yet produce a shiv egg, so I kept circling high above the rest, thinking of Jan and his stonecakes.
 
 
 
by Jan

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Hummed and mumbled while coasting

should i be fighting or giving up
do i resist or let this place sink in
am i sinking in place or flying

i have the apparatus in place to
placate my past desires with new
playmates, but it's all so gray

my marital ties, it may turn out
are strong enough for any fire
make me want to stay the same



by Jan

Night of Shiv Days

Some of them are just hoping for the best. 

Chama is looking out at the sunset behind the Mthyuh Town Hall Plaza, crowded shoulder-to shoulder with rubber-wearing, umbrella-holding flekes. The tureens are full to brimming over, the broth coming to a simmer. 

They show up thinking maybe their lives will change or they will have a really good time or they will end up doing scar tours at shiv temples for cash or dead in pieces in a filthy charnel nest. Since there's no time, the only way you can move forward is to shove action in a direction. 

Jan and Lloyd are Chamatilly's guests. They have all the upper chambers of Mthyuh Town Hall. There are shiv boxes and vine and small snacks of fruits and vichos. 

I told your mother, Jan, that I would look after you and Lloyd. She's trying to figure out her destiny, you know?

I do know because lately all I can see is her face when I close my eyes. It is painfully expressive. 

They're coming. Lloyd can see the tiny K-shaped figures in stack formation from a starting point somewhere in the sun. There's not yet any thumping of their tymbal apparatus, but already their lung music of high, tinny strings and echoey vocals is reaching the crowd.

As the sky darkens, it is a silent crowd-- no roaring, cheering, or chants. In their black garb, they sound more like a vigil. The beasts are growing bigger as they draw near. La Chama, Jan, and Lloyd are standing at ancient glory holes carved into the stone walls to safely view the event. 

Jan might have been a little miffed to miss a chance to turn heads in a crowd, but tonight she felt her full voyeuristic morbo bubble to her surfaces. 


Virgins of La Mthyuh

La Chama selects saves six virgins from Mthyuh's mouth until they change, and they are then set free. 

The virgins are sequestered into six stone chambers and develop tymbal structures between their thumbs and forefingers. They communicate only through the common mirror and by the clacking sounds when they are asleep. Some compare it to the sound of woodpeckers. 

Their solemn attendants are the Vikkies, who are mostly trans-women but also cisgender performance artists. The Vikkies are permanently named according to the most glamorous World capital or other point of interest adjacent to their chapter. Present International Chair: Vikki Madrid. 


Friday, April 23, 2021

warning: emotion

Pinging sounds of much hammering of metal on stone. 

Central Mthyuh Chank, the turnaround cleared of all traffic.  

Shiv tureens are the size of swimming pools, a little smaller than K nests. Raised on blocks just above eye level,the three festival bowls are being filled with a locally sourced vegetative broth. Below, there are thickly stacked coal and flammables. 

Jan and Lloyd are strolling like tourists, but wobblier, having to take in not just a change of existential dimension but also an unfamiliar region and ways. 

LLOYD: This is all freaking me out. I don't know if I can handle it. 

JAN: It's Shiv Days. But it's real is all. It's not a myth here. 

LLOYD: No. I mean everything.

JAN: Maybe we'll go home, or maybe it'll be better here. You better buck up. It's all an amazing adventure, and it's our lives. 

LLOYD: Ok. 

Every storefront has been scaffolded out past the sidewalk and barred like a jail to allow for jumping in and out of danger.

I get it that we share cultural and historic roots with these people but it's hard for me to imagine actually fitting in and being accepted.

The ancient totalitarian clock tower chimes random hours. Some say there is an algorithm.

How do you know all of this?

She's my mother, and she's developing hyper-archetypal knowledge. I read her facial expressions, but very deeply to the point of pure language, which is actually more accurate than any tongue.


Thursday, April 22, 2021

This is to document, for you, the life you're missing from

and then there's the guy across the street

between me to the east and Jan on the corner there

like he's ushering his bitches through a man canyon

he turns all purple round about sunset

the nice wife and their scary female pit

are never permitted to get a word in


by Jan

"Until you come back, alls I can do is keep track."

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

rings of ilyn


The young men follow the fleke slaves this way and that along the switchback trails leading up to Karir Kesh at the mouth of la Mthyuh, and their climb is made lighter remembering Ilyn's strange song. 
 
Say
Of Ilyn there are four rings
red and yellow, black and white
a very scratched fake ruby 
a brass spoon ring
ring of ash
and then the white ring
 
Sing
one of these days i'll 
seek forgiveness and 
i'll get forgiven and 
deserve forgiveness 
at the same time

Say
For each beautiful ring
Ilyn's road is harder
For these thankless trinkets
He's risking everything

Sing
i'm headed for disaster
won't you come right after
my head is full of laughter
let's climb a little faster

Say
when he gets to the the top the
red ring seems to light his hair
yellow saffron is all he wears
mood as black as Mthyuh's belly
he becomes a flaming canon ball

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Mrs. Jansdaad and La Chama Speak Using the Mind Only

Well. Here we are. 

Yes. Honestly I don't know what to do.

Thank you for your honesty. It's that this doesn't happen. I've never met sticky progeny. How did you get through The Crack. 

I didn't do anything. Maybe Braino was tracking me. 

That's likely due to how we share some Braino, sister. 

I met Peg. 

And now me. It's herstoric. 

What is the meaning of my life?

You'll have plenty of time to figure it out if you play your cards right. 

I like sitting and writing poetry at my kitchen table. 

Well, you're a monster now. 


Monday, April 19, 2021

Manias

i learned to fish, to ice fish for you
in case the markets would close down
how to harvest vichos of the forest

now these fruits are disdained
my sheaths and projectiles ridiculous
and I might as well be drunken
 
I try to rise again, with fuel
for your heaters for your engines
you say better become a technician

most of all I long to have you home
making space for your new ideas
and leaving all my manias alone


 
by Jan
"for Jan"

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Auspicious moment

There are no bats in this story. 

Well you sure look like one! [Other young men giggle or twitch their hands.]

Go on. Feed the flower, child. 

He doesn't wanna do it! [The young man stands up. There are no longer feet on the coffee table.] Give me that coin! 

The young man, a solid bio-engineering grad school candidate, tries to get up from the filthy sofa, but he is knocked back down as if by a sonic boom.

Suddenly, there is disco. 

Reptily's hackles rise atop her head to full height, translucent like tough, thin slabs of bacon shocked with blue.

The faces of Jan's daughter Jan and her boyfriend Lloyd can be seen peeking through the outside window to the chamber of the Mthyuh First House. Behind them, the ankles and three-clawed feet of Mrs. Jansdaad have stopped, steaming in the dust, and the music, except for the highest and most soulful of the voices, has faded completely. 

The young men may or may not not have believed in the Monster Poinsettia, but they all know what a K looks, sounds and smells like, even from miles away. Now there is one that appears to be waiting patiently outside their door. 

Take me, Chama. I am your slave. I pray that Mthyuh eats me first.

One by one, the young men fall to their knees around the Spanish-revival coffee table, repeating the chant, holding tight to the rings of black wrought iron letting their tears, snot, and drool rest on its glass top now instead of their shoes. 

Soon the five young men can be seen obediently following the Chama's five fleke slaves up into the jungle and this way and that in a line along the switchback trail that crosses the hill to Mthyuh Chank. The one on the end has been tasked with carrying the poinsettia, which he holds at arms length and with great exertion as far away as he can from his face. 

Greetings of welcome my travelers, fresh through The Crack. Welcome to Mthyuh First House. Your moment of arrival couldn't have been more auspicious. I would invite you in, but... [Chama steps further outside, cranes her neck back and blinks awkwardly to parse Mrs. Jansdaad's hideous face from a blinding sky of bright, silvery clouds.]


Early Spring Interactions with Neighbors are Painful and Sweet

Since Jan's been gone, new Jans have moved in next door. They are hesitant to let their kids come near me, as they should be, when our backyard activities intersect, as they do and will. I think at first they regretted that I'm a single man with no wife to watch me and no kids to play with their kids. I tried to gain their trust with greetings, offers, and small concessions so that they'd at least relax and appreciate me as a good neighbor. They did leave a key with me when they went off to Dubbaberah Chank for six weeks. The kids have noticeably grown since they left, and I've just told their mother so. Now I find they'll be moving to Dubbaberah soon.

The neighbors in back have exposed a vile and disrespectful streak. Am I a magnet for sociopaths? Never again will I enter into a dispute with a non-property-owner girlfriend of a property-owner neighbor. Always speak with the property owner about property issues. Typically, a young female Jan will make up for her feelings of insecurity about not being on any legal license or deed by entering into property disputes on behalf of the romantic partner, a sort of second-best to an engagement ring. I don't know what a male non-owner romantic partner would do in that situation because I have not encountered it. 

The other next-door neighbors are flekes, and they give life to our dead end on the park. It's impossible to tell who lives there and who's just visiting, who's related to whom, where this dog or that dog went and how he got replaced by another backyard dog. The father died. I'd seen him with his head in his hands on his front stoop one day, the day after his front window had been busted out with a rock. 

All my life I looked at the other end of our street as the bad part, and now I've brought all of that here, he says, wiping his face.

I haven't noticed anything else, was my answer. 

Yesterday I ran into the new owner, the ex-wife, as I was coming back with Lala from a walk. Her dogs were barking at my dog, whom I'd just let off her leash, through the fence. 

What's all the commotion out here, boys? She shouts coming out the back screen door. 

Lala is just showing everyone who's boss around here, I explained. 

Oh, dog stuff, she concluded, going back inside. 

Yeah! Haha, I replied.



Saturday, April 17, 2021

Red flag

her home has a sign says no hate here

but i see her in her back yard

looking around for watchers

and rolling a log across the property marker


Tuesday, April 13, 2021

The seedy part

Cap'm Pariah:  danger!

Five students at High Chank U who went to the same high school together are sitting around on filthy sofas. 

Common chamber rules Mthyuh First House put your damn feet on the damn furniture. 

Yeah! [Most of group places their immaculate athletic footwear atop a long, wrought iron, olde-Spanish-mission style coffee table with a precarious glass top.]

Say has anyone seen that guy Ilyn remember?

Ahhhaha. Out of sight, out of mind. 

What a freak that guy was-- with all the rings, right?

Yeah Rings of Ilyn we'd sing.

And the teeth necklace. He drilled holes when they extracted his teeth. 

When I think of what we did to that pervert. 

Don't you feel sorry for him though.

Totally, you think I'm a dick?

That's why you do shit like we did to a guy it's to wake them the fuck up. 

Wow brother you are caring truly now. 

ENTER Reptily and a potted plant. Four slaves follow in line behind her and take positions against the circumference of the chamber. 

Shit that looks like La Chama. 

No it's her bitch self Reptily. [Whispering] Her hackles are up. 

Yes it's me. I am Reptily. You are strong. You'll be among my proud slaves. You will have many wives, and your children will feed our Mthyuh. This is the Mthyuh First House? 

Ya but we are just staying here while we are in school. 

Tell me this. Who believes in the Monster Poinsettia. 

Hah it's a myth. 

I don't know-- I saw a guy once and

Fine. Your friend says it's a myth. I'll tell you what. If he wants to prove to me that this flower in this pot is not the Monster Poinsettia, then I, too, am a myth, and he will not be my slave. 

He's not really my friend, he's...

What do you say. Come here. 

I

Do it. Just do this. She's right. We should just kick her ass. There's no real Chama. 

The young man stands and walks around the coffee table close enough to smell Reptily. 

Don't swoon now. Be a man. Have you got a shiny coin?

Most of the young men check their pockets for shiny coins just in case.

Now give it as alms to the flower. Right there into the seedy part. Go on. It's only a myth. 

 

 



Friday, April 9, 2021

Fresh box

Reptily's slaves bring her a fresh box of shiv, bow, and remain hunched over as they leave the chamber. She opens the box and smiles, leaning all the way down to the floor from her seat. 
 
They bring it in this stoned and gilded box, a heavy safe that can keep its contents sound for a thousand WD. As if. I don't save enough for later. I eat shiv daily as if it were the last day of my life. And that too is ironic, for I fear I will never die. 

Chama, there are flekes nearby, calls a fleke slave. 

Ah, I could slay, rob, or traffic them. What a bore. Maybe they need help. 






Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Within The Crack

Lloyd... It seems like the only time when you are not verbal is during sexual activity, in which case I wouldn't actually mind. 

Mrs. Jansdaad farts. 

When they wake up, they are going through The Crack.

When Jan's daughter Jan looks up, she can see Lloyd's foot only. But that foot, shod and pant cuffed, is all that she can see anywhere besides herself.

Both Lloyd and Jan feel the peristaltic waves, inside themselves and all around them; they can watch the undulations against their clothing and feel it on their faces and the backs of their legs.

Jan hears a voice.

Oh really? Well you didn't even go to high school-- it was more like low school. 

Lloyd?

Oh my god Jan can you hear me

Yes. Very funny.

I think we're going through The Crack now.

Uh-huh, baby. You're the brilliant one.

The Crack is home to a billion holes

They say The Crack is home to a billion holes. Pilgrims, daredevils, and lost hikers alike will never be able to predict when and where they will come out. 

The Community College of Cement's entire Chang K. Chang Chank campus is dark except for a few pools of security lighting-- and the strong yellow bug lamp which illuminates the Crack Door Event area. Jan's mom Jan Jansdaad's steaming underwing fat flap is all that's keeping Jan and Lloyd from falling hundreds of feet into the parking lot below. 

Jan lands as close as she can to the bug light, which is there for the air conditioning unit attached to the bookstore next to temporary mobile classrooms B-D. Most campus employees, students and visitors walk around the air conditioning unit instead of trying to duck under it, which could cause them to end up in sudden Crack-related peristaltic shock (SCRPS), and besides now being invisible, their associates quickly begin to forget they ever existed. In this respect, SCRPS can affect an entire community from one instance only.

Lloyd is trying to keep up with Jan and her mom. As the odd group rushes across the moonlit baseball fields, plumes of white chalk dust spray from below Mrs. Jansdaad's three-clawed feet. And then they have crossed a short span of black top, and then they have reached The Crack. 

They might sound a little like disco when they're running, but when they stop there's nothing but funk, says Lloyd.

Sunday, April 4, 2021

Downward motility

become an animal during wartime, there's maybe a way back;
going feral during a peace assures that battle will be your path.



by Ilyn
"Sermons" frag. 18

Dire Cricket

Lloyd has been awake for a just few moments without moving from the tangle of sleeping bags a Scouts of Mthyuh brigade had donated to the clothing drive bin that the beast had lifted from its cement moorings and dumped here in its cliff nest. 

He fears that if he moves he will lose the beautiful light scent of jasmine? Monster poinsettia? It's very early in spring yet, and how would flowers grow this high up against a rock? He even imagines he can  follow light, pensive plucking on a mandolin. 

Then young Jan, sweet Jan, is walking toward him in gentle rays of light, with the massive and hideous silhouette of her mother resting behind her against the moon and clouds. The beast's subsiding breaths after flight create the lilting music as her lungs contract with a melodic metal popping perhaps more similar to a steel guitar.

In this new place, with his confidence dashed for once, Lloyd sees Jan's daughter Jan anew. He is prostrate and broken; she represents a future, a woman who can change his life for once, powerful in a sleeveless chintz chrysanthemum-print frock, even while barefoot and picking her way toward him through the soft debris.

He waits until she has climbed up beside him in the heap of torn, shiny viscose lining, fluffy polyfill and plastic zippers, her red-dark face only inches from his own. 

How

Shush. [She places a finger across his lips.] Just listen. And breathe. 

He draws in another chestful of her cologne, which is Dire Cricket, by Pharmsupply.

I'm here to take you away. It's... you know that's my mother, right? 

Lloyd nods, slack-mouthed.

Well she never wanted to hurt you. Only that you'd understand. To stop being such a shit.

Lloyd stares up into Jan's shadowed eyes, at the impossible sparkling there. 

She wants... and it's not really up for discussion, you know? She wants to take us through The Crack.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Back at APSNIPE

As the sun begins to lower behind the peak of Chang K. Chang Chank, Jan senses an awakening in the Injured Entity bay next door. They are separated on that side by several feet of ancient volcanic rock, through which a ceremonial glory hole had been drilled and through which they now whisper with the backs of their tongues, as only female K's can do. 

If we speak with our minds they can track it. 

I know. 

Are you ok? 

I will be. Flekke attack. Asshole. 

You are an inspiration not to kill. 

What do you mean. 

I mean you could have killed the flekke. 

Well he may become my son-in-law, so...

Ah right. I have kids too. 

Wait are you

Yes, tiny baby. I am that old. You can call me

Peg. You are litterly painted in shiv temples. They sing a song about you. She 

Had three kids when she went with the winds. I know. 

I don't know what to say. 

We live forever I guess. 

 

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

How are you sleeping?

a generosity of thoughts and feelings overflows me
and to you that shit is just a horror show

i know i'm not a fleshy projector for a 3d screen
i'm only the one who has to watch you go
 

 
 
by Jan
"For Jan"

filter tearing


 

Thursday, March 25, 2021

The argument for bioaerosol surveillance

K farts are so voluminous and dense that they can leave streaks in the sky that are barely distinguishable from wispy purplish clouds in a sunset. They are potent enough and in a way that can make mammals lose consciousness momentarily or even slip into a light coma. 

It is through the implementation of one such bioaerosol release that Jan is able to resecure her cliff nest by disabling Lloyd Bentbridge long enough to confiscate his weaponry, hurl it into the void, and get him locked into a leafy, teepee-like structure before he wakes. 

As she folds her wings across her feet to rest, Jan feels as though she is being watched. It's not long before Lloyd's mother, Lady Brentridge, appears with a fizzling shower of sparks and stands before a gaping, fogged-up hole in the cliff face. 

Their speech is echoey and through the mind only. 

Lady Brentridge: He's my son. How dare you?

Jan: He was trying to own my family. 

Lady Brentridge [after a pause]: He was always trouble. Thank you for not eating him. 

Jan: Now you're making me sick. 

Lady Brentridge: You're sick? Twenty-one years. Think of that!

Lloyd's Off Birth, by Lady Brentridge de Modena
 
It dies and leaves a rock inside you
Never cries or bleeds or says it loves you
Ruins every dream because you
Know it's missing from the boy you love.

Jan: I swallow rocks to help me digest meat. 

Lady Brentridge: Let's focus. What is it that you want?

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

drip trail down to the river

a harsh ray on a winter day
seems to dissect you trans-
laterally. finally the world 
will have its way

these gusts are sweeping up
your dust. mud pushes in 
the windows and weevils
turn in the flesh
 
now gravity alone owns
all the future dotted lines. 
rushing water under ice 
came from melting



by Jan

Defeated

He caught me with a fence rod
tip-tied with a hand-filed Ginsu
ventral to the funny bone.

So all I could do was drop my
shipload of stonecakes, and flew
like a tumbling letter K
 
to Mthyuh Preservation Society's
Amnesty Pit Stop for New or Injured
Prehistoric Entities

And is that where I am now, yes. APSNIPE. I can tell because you are communicating with me through the mind or body part of one of my species, which I'm sure is a living horror for whomever it is. I see my sentences/ ideas come up on the slab. But you don't realize she is also saying help me I am an enslaved and exploited sister. 
 
All she has to do is spend a few hours a day with her head strapped to a table built for lucid brain surgery. She's just a conduit to you, a three-pronged plug. Sure, some of us fly free with impunity. And I need your help. So please proceed.
 
APSNIPE is located on the site of the first K sighting: a Sears parking lot. The original asphalt is sealed and textured to facilitate landings. Amid a virtual city of scaffolding and tarp, MPS technicians scurry and pause, scurry and pause. 

Hello, I'm Connie? And I'm here for your preen gland checkup.

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Lloyd and lady

Feeling tired, Lloyd lays his head down in a gaggle of bras and closes his eyes. 

Lloyd: Now I could be anywhere, in bed. I wish I could wake up. I can't look anymore. God it's a gorgeous view, but far too terrifying. Some perspectives are meant to be set aside only for those who choose them. I could understand if I were a mouse, but come on it's a different level of consciousness. 

Lloyd's mother, Lady Brentridge de Modena Chank, appears in an impressive burst of optics.  

Lady Brentridge: Son why did you take my name. 

Lloyd: Because you have a title, and dad was a... where are you?

Lady Brentridge: I've been waiting all this time for you to reach a certain altitude else I cannot get through the Filter of Loathing. 

Lloyd: So the dead can... Mother?

Lady Brentridge: Yes, love.

Lloyd: Can you save me?

Lady Brentridge: No, darling. 

Lloyd: I

Lady Brentridge: Don't speak. You've got to act fast. As soon as you wake up from this nap, fashion a weapon from the wood in the nest. Look for maybe some scrap metal for a blade. You'll have the element of surprise when she gets back. Good luck, my little lord. 

Oh, and uh, by the way I just wanted you to know that while my intention always was to guide and protect, and to do that with my heart full of love, at the same time, however, I was paying so much attention to my role that, well, I recognize that during some moments I neglected to respond to the nitty-gritty contents of your life in a lucid or humane manner. 

Now when you're ready, go for the eyes first.

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Police Station

A gothic doorway beneath crossed brass spears. The keystone is chiseled with a curving notice: POLICE STATION. 

Jan had left the top to her sweater set on the back of her office chair, so she now has a mylar blanket as a shawl. Jan's dad is trying his best to get his voice heard through the ancient glory hole in the stone door of the precinct. 

Mr. Jansdaad: We'd like to report an abduction!

Suddenly, a speaker crackles to life. You don't have to yell, sir we are fully miked now. From what you say, this sounds like a K event, and I'm sure you know we can't and don't investigate or prosecute K events. But we'll send out a hooptie. Mr. Brentridge's estate will be reimbursed for any damage to the cave structure if indeed a K event is confirmed.

Both Jan and her dad sigh deeply and walk quickly in each other's arms across the stone pavement and out of the armored courtyard, back to the bustling lunchtime street. They turn and stand back together against a wall.

Jan: I don't think she'd kill him.

Jan's dad: I hope not, sweetheart. But that's her choice now, isn't it?



All up in the nest

Lloyd is violently shaken awake in time to see the cause of the shaking: the taloned feet, the size of small automobiles, having pushed free from the nest, pointing backward and curling majestically. The feet have  all but disappeared into the distant hazy clouds above the cliff when a tiny K shape comes into focus, soaring purposefully through the mists.

Lloyd: God, no. 

Mrs. Jansdaad has done a brilliant job with her first construction. She has carefully chose the trunks and major branches of young smooth-barked laurel trees, still pale yellow and gummy to the core. There must have been an entire grove of them nearby to create a structure with roughly the same footage, yet more depth, than a large built-in backyard pool. As for the downy padding, she has obviously raided a child's  party and emptied the colorful contents of a plastic ball pit into the bottom layer. On top of that were perhaps the contents of several Mthyuh Preservation Society clothing drive dumpsters. Then packing peanuts, shredded bamboo fencing. 



Monday, March 15, 2021

Law Offices

Door trimmed with a rose trellis. Brass plaque on door: LAW OFFICES

Lloyd Brentridge, Esquire, was always dressed in at least one part of a suit and often had the shirt open to a dark, furry chaos.

Lloyd doesn't actually work for Pharmsupply, and Mr. Jansdaad has already gathered that it is all bullshit when he nevertheless shows up at Law Offices as promised, trembling. 

Mr. Jansdaad: Jan! 

Jan Jansdaad: Daddy!

After a silent moment, Jan explains that she's working for Lloyd now as the receptionist. Also a fact that her dad has already gathered. It is the way she said it that is chilling and familiar. As if under a spell, and not in a good way.

Jan: He will see you now.

Jan's Dad: Thank you honey.

Open the deeper, inner door. Where Lord and Lloyd will either blend or clash.  

Lloyd: Shut the door behind you. 

Jan: I've brought in the records you requested. 

Lloyd: You see your daughter is now under my auspices. 

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: You probably know I'm not Pharmsupply, that it's all bullshit.

Jan: Yes.

Lloyd: Yet you came anyway. You haven't even taken a seat because I haven't offered you one.

Jan: I

Lloyd: Don't speak. Your wife is turning into a K, isn't she? You don't have to say a word. She missed the second shingles vaccine and she seroconverted. She has to have had a disposition, and I think you know some history on that. Mrs. Jan Jansdaad is not just any old Jan Jansdaad. She had a history before she met you and she has one now. And that history has been as repressed as it is mysteriously irrepressible, like ecriture feminine. A code only a genetic member could translate or inscribe. 

Lloyd starts abruptly, as if he has just heard a hilarious noise behind him.

Lloyd: What is that. What is that Jan. Do you 

Jan: It's disco. 

Lloyd: Don't you think I know what it is? Why? Why, Jan?

The thumping and whirring become louder: Mrs. Jansdaad's now gigantic foot pads and breath become louder: the dreaded disco-like sound of a K on the ground. 

The glass in the window crashes impressively, but all Mrs. Jansdaad can fit through it is the very tips of her beak bones, which she can barely get open wide enough. But she is hungry. 

Because Lloyd Brentridge has his fingers in his ears, Jan's tongue is able to restrain his arms and squeeze around his neck at the same time. 

Mr. Jansdaad [arms outstretched]: Oh, Lord!

Jan and her dad Jan Jansdaad then stand very still as they watch their mother and wife suck Lloyd, their sadistic lover and bully crush, by the neck through the window and then high up into the air in a single, otherworldly burst of power. Father and daughter alone began to look around them there in the breezy office, medical records still floating leaf like to the floor.


Sunday, March 14, 2021

Back at Jan's

Jan: You didn't even ask if you could come in. 

Lloyd: We just ate with your parents. I don't have to ask you anymore.

Jan [letting go of his tie]: Lloyd you know I feel very strongly for you but sometimes you scare me a little. 

Lloyd is feeling tired and sits on the sofa. Jan comes back with two beers and joins him.

Jan: I think it hits me in a primeval place when you try and order me around or raise your voice to my dad, but it might be just genes or hormones and not good decisionmaking. 

Lloyd [to the ceiling, as he rests his neck]: What if you didn't have to make any decisions. 

Jan [in a fetal position next to him without touching]: I don't think I would like it at all. [She scoots over and rests her head in Lloyd Brentridge's lap.] But then, that's your choice, isn't it?

 


Saturday, March 13, 2021

Guests

Jan and her complicated date Lloyd Brentridge join Jan's parents for stonecakes and vine at the dining room table. Jan sits next to her mother helping to poke through clumps caught in her swollen and keratinous gum line. Mrs. Jansdaad swallows infrequently but with large gulps that are visible in her neck as they go down her throat. 

Lloyd: Mrs. Jansdaad it's lovely to see you recovering. Your husband has done an admirable job at the griddle in your place. 

Mrs. Jansdaad lowers her face in Lloyd's direction, exposing a small parietal eye in her scalp. She stares, unblinking.

Lloyd: May I help you clear the table, Jan?

Mr. Jansdaad, jumping up: Why yes, why... please grab that syrup. 

Lloyd and Mr. Jansdaad find themselves alone in the kitchen. Jan turns around and finds Mr. Brentridge standing there, very close to him. There are just a few inches between them and not much room to maneuver there between the countertop and the fridge. 

Jan: Oh. Sorry Lloyd. Just let me

Lloyd does not move. He is staring into Mr. Jansdaad's eyes. Jan Jansdaad looks back at him without letting out a breath.

Jan: Is there

Lloyd: Shh. I just want one thing. And that's the truth. 

Jan can hear his daughter setting out dessert dishes from the glass cabinet as well as his wife's pebbly cough from the other room.

Lloyd's voice is hushed and stern, and his breath is hot.

Lloyd: That's quite a case of shingles you have going on in there. 

Jan: Yes, it's just-- Pharmsupply wouldn't cover the

Lloyd: Don't say Pharmsupply to me. I work for Pharmsupply. I am their agent in Dubbahberah Chank.

Jan: I'll get you the records. She had a preexisting inclination. But you're dating my

Lloyd takes Jan's wrist and squeezes it tight. Jan loses control of his fingers and drops a vine glass on the floor.

Lloyd: Don't you ever say your daughter's name to me again. Unless you are ready to take her place. 

Jan: She doesn't know anything. Don't worry. She

Lloyd [squeezing Jan's wrist harder, and twisting]: I need samples of her Mrs. Jansdaad's pyncofibers. By tomorrow morning. In my law office. 

Jan [straining]: Yes. I'll get the pyncos. Whatever you want. My daughter is a good person. I won't... I won't say her name. 

Lloyd, tucking in his shirt and stepping back into the dining room: Jan, get in there and help your father would you. With the cleanup. And then we'll go. 



Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Fireside chat

Jan: The edges of your thoughts are so sharp I just want to grab a file and sand them off. Maybe by our being together

Lord Bentbridge: No, it's not like that-- isn't it more of a woman's function to

Jan: Look the man-woman dichotomy can really be an albatross when you

Lord Bentbridge: I know but you seem to think that this is about you and me, but

Jan: Well this, here, at the moment-- I only see you and me here. 

Lord Bentbridge: Overall I would be going through this in a vacuum I think

Jan: You know better than to think that 

Lord Bentbridge: There was a couple with their two babies on the sidewalk this afternoon when it was so gloomy right before sunset. Wind was howling. Twigs were flying. One of the babies started a weird hooting cry and then the other an identical cry. It created a sort of audio hellscape.

Jan: This is what I mean; you see you

[ENTER MRS. JANSDAAD]

Mrs. Jansdaad: Why Mr. Jansdaad curled up on the rug before the fire. 

Mr. Jansdaad: How you got in here without making the floors creak

Mrs. Jansdaad: Engrossed entertaining another imaginary friend I see.

Mr. Jansdaad: Ha! I thought I might entice you for

Mrs. Jansdaad: If I can get over there without rearranging the furniture

Mr. Jansdaad: How's your tooth.

Mrs. Jansdaad: It's coming out but that's good because I never had a tooth that size before, did I. And the crown is coming down, do you see? Feel here. 

Jan took Jan's hand and pressed it against her forehead, which was slowly regaining it's previous shape.

Mr. Jansdaad: They say you'll be stronger afterward. Because you went through it. 

Jan Jansdaad looked into her husband's eyes blankly, like a reptile.

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Daughter of La Chama

Jan arrives home with scales covering 98% of her body, unable to even get the key out of her purse much less use it in the lock. Her fingers were claws.

We should never have mingled with their species. 

She kicks the door by way of knocking, gouging it with her toe claws. For Jan, as he opens the door, the sight of his wife at first presents as deja vous. Then horror, then caring. 

Oh baby look at you please come in... [looks at door] What...?

I should have paid cash for Hopinaskipina. It's not as painful as they say. 

God you look like the Daughter of La Chama. Let me hide my shiny coins!

Heh that's cute Jan. How am I going to make dinner. 

You're so old fashioned. Let me do it for once. 

[Jan sighs and shakes her head, which causes the sounds of knuckles popping.]

The hell

tonight a crust forms around me, a

fluttering, gummy placenta

the muscles are locked from 

pleasure.

last night i was trying to drive a

car on a building ledge

i was steering pretty well

until.

they say never go to sleep afraid

or stay awake either

the body will win you over

the hell. 



by Jan

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Lord Bentbridge

Why, Lord Bentbridge? Why have you come at such a late hour. Come now sir, come right in. You're getting wet. 

Lord Bentbridge, with a tip of his hat and apologetic smile, steps across the threshold, adding in so doing a beleaguered flourish of his half-cape. Jansdaad my friend. My presence here is as puzzling to me as it is to you.

I hope it's bad I mean I hope it's not bad news. 

Fear not, only my wife out late again, and I thought why not pop over to Jan's place for some of that excellent sherry, which I suspect he might be enjoying already on his own!

Come Lord, lean on the mantle with me and raise a glass. [They walk over to the mantle, where there are glasses and sherry.]

I say puzzling because

Yes, why do you say puzzling?

Well, let's not be dour. Cheers to you!

Cheers!

Suddenly, the door opens. 

Jan? I'm home with... who's here?

Nobody.

Well you've got your arm up on that mantle like an orator, as if you're entertaining.

Ha! 

[Putting away groceries, yelling from the kitchen.] Say have you heard from Jan?

Jan our daughter?

Who else? Your father is dead darling.

You know how many Jans it could be. 

Well have you heard from her? Pharmsupply won't pay out for shingles.

You mean Hopinaskipina? That's the most annoying commercial. 

She's been hanging around with that sadistic lawyer. You should call. 

Do you mean Lloyd? Lloyd Bentley. 

Yes, he's an esquire.



Sunday, February 28, 2021

No second shingles shot

Jan liked watching a little tv in the afternoon, or rather she didn't like it, but she was hypnotized by it when her husband Jan had it on, which was most of the time, because it soothed his nerves. She kept it on mute when he wasn't in the room, but then he'd start to notice there was something off, and he'd come back and take the mute off, and that would inevitably be when they were having commercials. The commercials were even more transfixing because of their special audio qualities, which had been outlawed for a while, and then they just seemed to creep back in. The volume and frequency alterations were probably still illegal, but someone was lying about it. Then it would take years of legislation or court processes to get them to stop doing it again even though it never stopped being illegal, and it never stopped being wrong. Only lying had stopped being wrong. The acceptance of and mass participation in lying and religion was the most brilliant social phenomenon of the moment. 

Jan would be out in the hooptie to pick up a prescription, and she'd try to read or imagine the faces of the other drivers. The ones in the nicer cars seemed to be gloating. They'd have a wry smile. The guys in the elevated trucks and campers were smiling too, but it was a mean smile. Minorities in crappy cars often seemed pissed off or trying really hard, squinting, to get around. They would be getting tailgated by a guy in a jacked-up 450 with a mean smile. Jan imagined how she looked to other drivers. I look like a freak. I look like a birth defective person with a caved-in head and a flabby, skinny white neck who is trying to cover it all up with a big fluffy beret, a cowl sweater, and giant over-the-glasses sunglasses. I give them all a target to look down on, except the minorities, who don't seem to be paying attention. 

The pharmpro is grotesquely obese. His eyes are enormous behind thick glasses. Do you know if Pharmsupply covers the Hopinaskipina vaccine. Let him check. Not. Ok. Rather, it isn't okay, but is it this poor man's fault? Wouldn't shingles itself be much more costly? Not if you die. Right. Shit I am speaking aloud. It's just a thought experiment, doctor, says Jan. I mean pharmpro. I know you don't run the health system. Jan remembers back to her days with the pharmpro boyfriend. I know what they do to get shiv for themselves and how they cover it up. This man has a generous smile. What does he make, 120? 150k? I want what he's having. Jan gives the pharmacist a little wink. That behavior and lots else is why, in her personal opinion, she can only be regarded as total freak material. 

The riots at the Mthyuh Preservation Society were on the radio. I should have been there. Had I known, were I more well connected. Of course I know we can't live without the Filter of Loathing. But it's all we have to unfocus on. It's a symbol of our systemic bastardization from society, whatever that is now. They could use a few good old fashioned fleke oaths to start getting their stewardship straight. But most are bought off by Pharmsupply blah blah. It would be fun just to get out. Next time the filter is down I will try and get in with radicals. Maybe even Jan would come along. Who am I kidding. How would I make him stonecakes in the hooptie. They are his life. Baby we've got to get to Highchank and stand up for the original shiv. They have stonecakes. Might work. 

Then the chant, with another not infrequent para-informational MPS interruption came on. The chant is accompanied by a distillation of all the free world's favorite music remastered to praise La Chama. Apply brake now. Stop in the moment. All future days are at the state's discretion. I am entitled to the following poisons and schedules. It was annoying how they read the schedules like circus barkers, in thrilling growls and whispers. 



Saturday, February 13, 2021

Dome & corpus


you can still feel 
what happened there
in the dome and 
the tired corpus 

they tried to get at the heart
distractions popping everyplace
see your own hidden pains in me

that full winding
tale is our history
not genealogy

their necrotic
leavings behind
make us all sick

until they're gone
and we're better
more exhaustion
mispronouncements