Thursday, December 29, 2022

Edifice of manliness

Jan and Peg are hanging upside down in a gentle cataract. Their dust and dung are coloring the water purple. They do not have to raise their voices because they are able to speak and understand with their minds only. 

JAN: I was lidderly punching myself in the head with my uh... claw knuckles, caused an avalanche that wiped out a populated chank. Trying to think of where i stashed my cloakawax. It can feel like one is lost in life when it's just their bobbles they can't find. 

PEG: What is it like not being lost in life, Jan? 

JAN: Ah so perhaps--I mean, I get it, I can't answer that question--maybe misplacing health and beauty products is just a reminder of being lost in general, and therefore it's even more annoying. 

PEG: But you have goals, a plan of some kind, or you think you should have those. 

JAN: Uh both; i mean wherever you get your values, as imperfect as they may be, what else are you going to go on? My drive to contribute to society to make something of myself if not a beautiful family then a mark, a good mark, an edifice even. 

PEG: That thought carries the obscenity of manliness, no? 

JAN: Are you saying that learning to live without linear time is the same as dephallocentralization? That the concept of work as building toward the future and goals themselves are outdated masculinist tropes? 

PEG: I'm saying that our environment provides for us. We don't have to worry about our next paycheck. When we are thirsty, we drink from a rivulet of melting snow. There's nothing more to do than turn our heads. When we are hungry, a fleke is right there, on a cliff hike or a chain gang. Our purpose is only to be and to enjoy. Forever. 




Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Tribal dance for wedding

At a late in life wedding there was a tribal dance

performed by the bride and her brother

the guests expected them but not the other

Their feathered sleeves scraped the all-purpose flooring

The track was more than six minutes long

They each took more months than that to recover

Their bodies were blurring into the wallpaper

Even there indoors their hair sweat dried in wind

At several points he tried to stop her

She seemed to be expressing a life of incomprehensibility

And he a cattle rancher's drive to drive and drive

Lesser ceremonialists may have left it to stationary 

headbanging but this was a once in a lifetime

reckoning with sense itself its corrosive limits 

its lack in every answer

and dancing through that crack

no one joined them on the floor when it was over




Reptily-ily


My favorite surgeon


this surgeon was into plastics and he

sewed me up in tiny careful knots

that one almost bursting in anger

seemed to be so afraid of the nodule

he dared not insult it til the final moment

another claimed no students were involved

but he was one day a kid with a drafting table

and the next an umbilical slasher 

my favorite and i conspired to decline altogether

and send him off instead to the cayman islands



 

Ilyn

Monday, December 12, 2022

Bonfires are moot


It's brave of you to be in touch as I dissemble disassociate dissolve

It's clear it's not just morbid curiosity that makes you stay involved

Perhaps you learned before i did to not expect tomorrow

This sorrow born of understanding time and vanity sloth vice

You got the best three times on steps: formal wear throwing rice

They got pieces of our minds a lot of meat and plenty deep

We've got our pain to mine shallows to drown in words to keep

I got to explore occupy the boundaries thrilling roads to take

And now, as I stand in the rain on terminal monday, a scene to make

I see how fucking fucked this fucking world has fucking fucked me

I see the shit the shitty shit this shit of shit has shitting shat me

And i can take a breath and feel the float of my floating being floating

And if it's the end the ending means the end of trying to see ahead

To what the hell hell would have been that i'd have done instead




by Ilyn

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Grandiose nightwalker


through this brick there is knocking about from the empty

house next door between the normal echoes from the highway

all movement now seems obscene who would choose these

hours to mess around in their yard or bike perhaps a ghoul 

not a sprite they sparkle best in twilit bowers of urbanity and 

archeological digs not in the living pulsing emptiness of full

refracted light this moon even has a satellite a star that looks

itself like a moon against the misty queen soaking in tulle 


only a few days ago it was really winter and i rather liked

having gloves on wrong hands the unexpected pulling on

unsuspecting patches of skin hardly noticed a flag beating

in the dark beneath a neighbor's porch shingles or the house

fallen silent that always has barking dogs and the prints of

their paws still there on glass in the street lamp's limited 

aura there's the assumption that a community is at rest or

simmering behind doors with lamps with motion detectors


the trick about going out to see what's happening when 

no one else is there is that you then become what's 

happening and because nothing is supposed to be

happening you become a species of trespasser attention

grabber ghost cat burglar stealer of visions and movements

not meant to be seen and also meant to be not seen but

also seen often enough that there aren't many questions

or witnesses to see to it you don't see what you're seeing

 

 

 
Don Sidon 
(Trans. por Dawntay)

Saturday, December 3, 2022

I only want to waste this day

 


jarring when the screen goes blank

mind is awake but the body is numb

same if you like to party or paint

might look dumb when it's said and done

 

might feel great when yr at yr peak

creed might translate to the joy of life

wait another 20 years before you speak 

never live long enough to get it right


i only want to waste this day

on vanity and distractions

waste it into infinity


there's no tomorrow and that works for me

though it doesn't cure the anxiety

get to hang onto my piety

nose is open to society




Reptily-ily

Thursday, December 1, 2022

O Winter, Fruit of Betrayal

another half moon with a hard edge

there's just enough light to get around 

there's a precious circle in there but you

still need the lamp to find shit in leaves


soon full will feel like almost too much

a self-parody getting pretty old

we project our nature on that thing

it's deader than you or me but there it is


you are a tiny horse tonight whereas once

it was clickety-clickety clickety-clickety now

it's a click and a clack a click and a clack clack

you stop and stand to act as weather redactor



For my Lala,
by Jan

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

VACATOR

We set it all up together but then you vacated without moving

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

woe-ooo-why

Instead you didn't answer or acknowledge the dogs' or my howls

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

woe-oh-ooo-we-ooo

I shouted your name stomping room to room in the big house

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd  

we-oh-whyy

I agree it was crazy because no one was really there

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

oh way-ooo ay-yay

You are one of the putrid moments of silence in french cinema

d'd'd'd 

ay-yay-oh

How the back aches from the lack of lines

d'd'd

woe-ee-oh

I keep the memories of unspoken love

d'd

ooo-ohhh

And a mask of your face

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

ay, ay, ay, ay

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

ay, ay, ay, ay

[repeat]




Lil' Modat

 

Friday, November 25, 2022


 

Monday, November 21, 2022


 

 


Sunday, November 20, 2022

Heap of tulle

 


literally an emergency is just what comes up

but you're more inclined to peak over the edge

the more anxious you get aware you become

it's a gambler's disease a disassociation 


everyday drama depends on what could happen

to stop the world from turning look in the other direction

after a stage length of chaines turns even if you spot

focus on a stationary chandelier balcony velvet seat 


in frozen time and space you must still breathe

which has less effect on aging than the alternative

your mind is temporarily stunned by spinning

you can consume and blow out the stillness

 

without taking the challenge in hand you'll end up

walking in circles like a dehydrated desert refugee

then crumpled swan like in a heap of tulle

the centrifugal force will have taken on a life of its own




Dr. Donna Thong

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Hard scrabble

 


JAN: What should we do should we make it so the genders are a grab bag that one can assign oneself in any combination, or are we saying these were assigned divinely, not by choice, that it's the Body that came out wrong. Or not that at all. How shall we know. What can I ask that doesn't put me at a disadvantage. It's supposed to make me vulnerable. That's so I can understand. I who don't understand. The understanding stands in the soul of the haver of the identity. We know from years of being referred to as it/ that that it seems maybe to us petty demanding the gender after you are already distinguished clearly from other classes of ambulatory sentients like the grasshopper. 

PEG: It sounds like you've been thinking deeply. Why? 

JAN: ...

PEG: I was listening. I agree you're vulnerable, but not because of the new gender directives. They are only asking that you be sensitive and thoughtful. If you're already that, you'll have to do shiv all day. 

JAN: They're asking for more than that. To get a W.A.S.T.E. I have to say that I've earned nothing if everyone didn't have the opportunity. That obviously counts out all K blood because as enormous soaring reptiles there are gigs necessarily exclusive to us only. 

PEG: What's really lame is the whole premise that we're included now since we're not going to kill hunt or eat so what have we really gotten in return.

JAN & PEG TOGETHER: Friends' Service Hangers! 

JAN: I feel a lot fresher in general. I focus on the day to day. There's some good kibble and fruit snacks. 

PEG: Tell me in a thousand years. How content you are. They think we're vampires just because of our lifespan is long and theirs is short. Because you're a seroconversion, you're not all K, and you're new anyway. I don't want to bring you down. K's fly spread eagle. 

Peg and Jan have been lying back sunning their tummies with their elbow spikes holding them up with their dorsal flaps unfurled in the wind. It's an ancient river bed. Their spines have broken through the outer crust of sediment and leave canyons of shadow and dust behind when they each roll to the right pull up their left spike and slam it in again way up pointing toward the cliff face. It looks like they're about to ski, or fly, but instead they leap at the rock horizon with their toe claws and scoop the air behind them and scrabble craning their necks up the cliff to their hangout. The rock has been hollowed out and boulders pile up at the base, which is also where they drop the extra bones. 

JAN: Is it because you're a lesbian you try to discourage me? I have joy thinking of my husband and wish we will be together? You want me there under your dark cloak? 

PEG: Haha bitch shut the fuck up. 

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

JAN: They is some mens around here an my nose is open.

PEG: There is no mens. Just more gender question marks either being ported by pharmsupply or coming in wild like you through The Crack. Now go back and read the directive. This is your life now. Jan is far too small to have a meaningful relationship with you anymore. That's all in the past. He's tiny; you're big. Doing this is not about that. You have to represent the boundary-lands. 

JAN: No I get it it's not even about like I'm here with you or you with me or we're here together. It's more about this rock shelf and some snacks and the open air and the mist and what we mean and what we can do but don't do. 

PEG: But also what we did do history and what we do do because of our air skills and gravitational importance and in terms of fertilization to all the chank communities.  

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!



per Phyllis (embedded)
Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

LX1 (frag.)

instead of taking on a whole new imaginative god-world

they simply refused to learn much about the science-world

and from that mystery their fantasies hung

they were pendant on truths too fiery for questions

their humility grew from an easy acceptance of unknowability

even the experts kept jumping all the way ahead

to the volcano's edge of knowing

and within those boundaries sought to keep proving nothing



 
La Chamatilly
Zaul Eikense (trans.)
Omne Quod Scitur
LX1 (frag.)

Friday, November 18, 2022

i don't rise

we couldn't tell why it was bright out

basic blindness was the scheduled moon

it was a reflective light but of what


lala keeps track of which route/ night

we headed left below the shiny cloud cover

these days she's prone to weave and digress


the sounds have changed with the freeze

what makes it through the brick is a moaning

now and then a snap, the mini pipes of tinnitus 




by Jan

Sunday, November 13, 2022

don't touch and don't look

 


X:

you have a dazed face narrowing your attention to the peripheries

as a fish looking ahead and behind might be the effort part

it doesn't matter where i stand because you are my object, not the opposite

i would torture you with language if i were much better at it

you are made humble by not having anything better to do


Y:

even i am your this or that sounds to me to be too self-referential

so i'll be silent to also avoid objectifying you with the word you

this is half a hollow ringing sphere also with a ring in its nose

there we go we is presumptuous but it he she all ok by me it him

i am attendant by accepting attention as one would rain

 

 

 

by 
Reptily-ily
trans. by 
Menen Jenral

Friday, November 11, 2022

a shopper forcus




tonight we're going out into the field, darling. far out. 

i won't see you again til the pictures come back


we'll point the lens where the world would be

had it not been and gone so quick


perhaps it still exists between the clicks

even our faces might rematerialize


thanks for the kisses but i fear i'm your salt lick

hollowed out on one side and more sensitive there


where the wind passes through i glimmer

my elbows operate as if by riding straps


with your shit i can still pluck the unfrozen grass

my knuckles are warm and let me tie the knot


but a massive arctic front is imminent

i'll stand in the kitchen window to watch you squat



by Jan

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Tonight's dog walk

 

flashback three days it was a

half moon with a blade on the flat side

then came the self-imposed blur

an off angle of mismatched crescents

suggests a circle but

now it's joined up with other forces

also in their glory if for an evening

Toris, the horoscope lady in her fort

her tense prophecies about the weather

the lottery is now our widest belief tent

into the dark is where we went

passersby were spooked and silent 

we could only hear them in the grass

when they were already up upon us

pedaled fast because it's become dry

i produce a plastic bag from Pharmsupply

and pick up lala's shit



by Jan

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Tonight's dog walk

you can always plan for a fall but when it happens

the ass goes to ground fairly quickly


you live in more than one dimension and

you've got to be aware of the one you're seeing

 

upside-down world where the signs are all menacing

right-side up world where the signs lead to an exit


if not you'll mindlessly play along and fuck up

or get tripped up in the signs and become despondent


but none of that will keep your balls off the pavement

overall if you can still feel them you're fine



by Jan
"Chilly, still. Lala just stands and seems to forget her purpose. To evacuate her bowels, she has to strain against me on the lead."

Monday, October 31, 2022

Tonight's dog walk

 



a half moon hung among the branches

and behind the trees stained velvet sky

sent the children home but also sirens


they came in droves learning the approach

modified for pairs of teenage jackals

the tiniest possible skeletons and wizards


we could monitor the door throughout our wanderings

along the path that winds between the trees

but no one tripped the light above the steps


rabbit and seal parents confessed their plan

to consume the bounty of their charges' words

bypassing both threat and vulnerability



by Jan

Friday, October 28, 2022

Distillment of the Urge to Worship Illinois

Ilyn sits best he can in a lotus position as Reptily gently picks blood clots off his scalp and back and replaces them with a rub of mineral oil and bright yellow sulfur dust. Water drips from a shaggy black fungus lining the walls of the cave.

ILYN: My life force flickers like a spook bulb.

REPTILY: You have the miraculous but unfortunate curse of carnation redundancy. You keep being born again, but uglier. 

ILYN: But what I can see is all beauty. 

REPTILY: Then you are selfish to boot. Never mind our horror when we gaze upon you. 

ILYN: I've proven my willingness over and over to disappear forever. 

REPTILY: By now you know it's only a ritual. It could never be the same as that first surrender. 

ILYN: Until I jumped into Mthyuh's roiling gut, I was burning from the inside out. 

REPTILY: Why is it. Why do others want to stay and can't but you can't go and stay away.

ILYN: Why do others want to stay and can't but I can't go and stay away? 

REPTILY: Yes. 

ILYN: My cross to bear is the mystery of my cross to bear. Flekes come to me because I am the most extreme expression of their own befuddlement. Like they'd watch a kid beating a doll against a fence. Ya, I am that doll, and I am that child. 

REPTILY: Ya I am that fence and you whitewash me. I mean I say you are full of shite. You are holy, another mystery. You'd cash your own mother into indentured servitude to heresists. Oh wait. 

ILYN: Ya look who's talking. At least you kept her in the family. 

REPTILY: She could do worse than collect shiny coins at volca and command shiv service on her own servants all week. It was her idea. She herself is practically a deity now. All life is contingent and symbiotic. Except for yours, Illinois. 

ILYN: Look at us. A pair of broken records. Have you ever noticed that my full name looks like a "no" peeking out from behind bars? 

REPTILY: With an s on the end. 

ILYN: Ya that's silent. You know what it means. Freedom. No to not freedom.



per Phyllis (embedded)

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Seasonal-disorientative gravitational sensitivity

first lala started wandering in circles and 

pulling me along in her orbit and then i

felt so wobbly and we were both getting

magnetized by that tree that you and

i together couldn't get our arms around

but its power seemed to wane once we

stumbled closer stopped watched the 

beige sides of its fallen leaves return

ambient light but as if from beneath

so that there were mini search beams

reaching back as i bent over to pick

up the poo, and when i added my 

torch we nearly swooned again the 

ground tilted and we had to ride it

bent kneed the rest of the way lala 

was straining on the lead but not 

ahead, sideways as if to mark her 

value to be free but also bound or 

to bring me along to her agenda

striped with shadows in these lanes 

confounding cats for pumpkins for cats

while at home she will lie by my feet 


by Donna

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

As five boys overtake us on the sidewalk

i'd been farllowing their ruings fer halfa mall

when lala stop they caught up walkeen tall

lookeen straight ahead sep for eyes all starry

who turn arounan winkan say he sorry


because the harvest is coming up 

shadows are jabbing into daily life

a afternoon walk with my pup

turn into a tree with a knife


it's the planet's sickning turn tort

flame on the horizon you caynt

walk backwere fass enough or

evolve or spind or learn 


sure your clan presents a novel difficulty

but it's otherwise unrewarding

who wouldn't take easy bake up the street

or a pendant night on el capitan  


my path has not led to gender psychedelia

but i've come very close now to what 

amounts to a high-tech diaper fragment

and i can tell you sometimes: it's clumpy



Lillian "Lil" Modat


Thursday, October 6, 2022

trama-induced attention deficit

i'm just saying words because i can't let you touch me

you know how you might mutter nonsensical somethings

on a train car under the roar resting on a man's shoulder

 

its the equivalent of a purr though i should know better

or a cocked-up night caller imitating dump trucks

songbirds must sing their garbage regardless


i think a dog wants to converse but there's no 

water in the dish and that's how much language

can fill up or satisfy your absent vacuum


blathering on a stool makes me an easy mark

because the words are just a placeholder for your agency

i give you all of these raw and unperturbed by care


all the sentences i have expressed have brought me

trauma-induced attention deficit disorder from their failure

as abjectly worthless as money or religious fervor


as open and sincerely as to share pips from a grove

i grant this empty meaninglessness for you to throw away

as soon as you can see me pull up in the drive



"For you, Peg."
by Phyliss (embedded)

Tonight's dog walk

take nighttime dog walks only in a waxing moon or if you see party lights

you can both track the stages with optimism 

avoid the panic of shadows dissolving in oil

projecting feelings that hope disappears


how likely is it to look up and see one ring glowing open in the cloud pavé

and arch your back and spin your face to find that 

you stand at the center and yes the dark has singled you out

while in fact you're stealing time from the night that you'll have to pay back


what were the words we left below that 3/4 satellite

why do those i do collect arrive at home

disjointed and unintelligible, snow back from a mountain,

a muttering pool behind a firewall of mist



By Jan Jansdaad
Highchank Jr. High
Homecoming Week Hangar Fair
Poetry Stall, Bench 12

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

No more-cum-forever


No more-cum-forever

all i could produce

after getting the news

was shot through with blood

i earned but didn't save

no white cotton briefs

-cum-air to breathe

not a drop for your beard

no signed letter marks

nor for sofa pillows

check your bucket seats

for the dusts of time

my-cum-yours

and this always was

every iteration

even the invisible ones

counting off elations

i still subscribe

at least in my 

heart-cum-mind



by Jan

 


Friday, September 23, 2022

RE-CAP'M18: He sweated it

 


Always ask yourself: how is this moment auspicious
Then remember who sweated all of it for you
See when he dropped it shook loose some shit and
Made him less valuable as bud (blood was 33%)
But more for humanskind to gather from lily pads
And cough up for Volca in the form of a shiny coin



from "Good Graciousness: Ilyn's Perspiration as Nourishment"
Children's Myth of Mthyuh

Better psych care

At some level they all knew they were bad and that the only good would be to wipe each other out and to enjoy doing it. 

There was also thanks to the shiv an intense respect for the individual spirit in each putrid violent body, sprites who were challenged to but could not become angels and were unavoidably and irredeemably sucked into the gravity of their hollow pelves, long fingers, and tiny manus.

"List of lists, I've lost my license." Jan spoke with her mind only, but it was real language. 

Peg: "You funny."

"I mean I really los... oh, damn."

"Ya they make them so thin they can get lost in a clump of pycnofibes on your ass."

Both: "Hahahahahaha!"

Jan: You know, Peg: I could just swoop around with you forever. 

Peg: That's what this is, this moment.

Their wings were on slow beat two, three times. There were no peaked or valleyed panoramas, just some yellow mist and greenish floor which both stretched out and curved down as if over a globe through all the angles they could see out of. 

My dorsoventral flap is really chafed. 

I like the vet-mix salve down at Friends' Urgency Hangar. It's practically a spa. 

Ya, I need to get my W.A.S.T.E. stamped soon anyway. I'll get the lavender. I know which one you mean. 

The day they started giving out Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimates to K's was the day they say we got our freedom. 

Better psych care anyway. 

I say volca to that. 

K's fly spread eagle.

 

Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)

RE-CAP'M09: love-pumping cancer

Cap'm dreamed of a bloating worm attached to his neck. It had undulating rings which were flesh colored. Its peristaltic ack-shone was conjoined inter-lockingly with a rhythmic swelling.

Soon it felt heavy on his chest and the music started playing. He was sweaty underneath its heaving breadth. The pitchur frames were bumping up against the paint, which was bubbling.

Someone, must've been Him, reached down to feel denim at the groin. Suddenly everything made sense and he was able to identify with his attacker. It was a... love-pumping cancer...

"Cap'm! Cap'm? Wake uhp! There's been an event!"

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Au revoir dragon cracheur

au revoir dragon cracheur

poison divin de l'hypnose

fabricant de transe flamboyante

l'obéissance des zombies

impossible à domestiquer

en raison de la taille

sur le plan pratique

et pour lequel tu es destiné à errer

comme le coeur qui te remplit de sang

bat plus ouvertement que jamais

un jour tu pourrais de nouveau

poser une silhouette puissante

mais ils t'ont coupé la langue

mais vous apprendrez à exprimer votre 

dénigrement d'une autre manière

 

 

par Santorabo 

Friday, September 2, 2022

Greasy little aryan

He was a greasy little aryan. During that first meeting at the goat ranch, I posed and framed in ways I thought would get his eyes to drop. Finally I realized he was more sophisticated than that. He used his peripheral sight, which had developed throughout his awakening years in a red state, to map every bend and notch of my visible surface and behaviors, to precisely gauge biological changes. We were alone in the bread shaped tube of a trailer home. 

He rested back on the kitchen sink and looked around like a good worker still in task mode. I felt free to stare directly knowing he could see that too but respected feared men me too much to make a move to get to work on the project about which we were both entertaining growing visions.

He smelled like cooking and flannel. He was channeling desire into rage at the spitting llama he'd tried to shave that morning. He'd like to chop its head off. See it run around with just it's neck swaying about. I swatted the fly on my levi's with my hand and left it there. 

We each had our end. Thinking about ways to get to the middle. The middle of his face was a goatee on a tan around a roomy mouth. Now he was talking about the island that breaks the surface of a bath, with the palm tree and grass. The center of the island. What had I missed. 

When I looked up I could finally see his blue-gray stare right on me, waiting for a reaction. I just laughed and started unlacing my boots. Ya he says after all the goat piss and bullheads i bet you'd like a shower. 

Naw, I'm good if you're good.


por Santorabo

Thursday, August 18, 2022

Depends on my ass

When civilization's crass, who'll step in to up the kitty? 
A man spends a life with the world's elite on the same planet
What can he give? What is the answer? Depends on my ass.

Everybody's riding on it, the skills I bring. I feel the responsibility,
What can I say do now with the weight of this knowledge a
big load of memories across two centuries, the first step into the

Future depends on my ass. Now I can't look around the room 
and say oh yeah, well of course he has a prostate, he has a prostate,
and yeah he probably uses it all the time, I can be that way but

Depends on my ass is not going to change, at least hopefully 
not more than once a day. Depends in each new day. Depends
on how it goes, and whether or not I'll have dick to say about it.



 
Ayre Fromme Diaz

Saturday, August 13, 2022

Saturday, July 30, 2022

They asked to be spared from predators

dear god please help me find my way back

last time i didn't know where you at

keep me in a place that's proofed for pain

and then i wake in this room again


soon as i got here i understood

chaos is out there and in the blood

freedom needs a template to lay down

a flag or stake to drive in the ground


i built a log cabin of rhetoric

just like my forbearing eccentrics 

they asked to be spared from predators

i must submit to my editors



by Donna
Institute for the Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement
Chukka Chank Center 
Community Week Poetry Festival, Table 7

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Miracle of Light

i walked with lala into the black area where we knew the park was around 10

before my eyes adjusted and after we entered night's shadow i inhaled sharply

and deeply and as the oxygen hit i could see better and confirm by standing 

still with my head back that ya, there's hardly any stars due to light pollution


but then i picked up lala's shit with a plastic grocery bag and started hoping

that my mom didn't ever feel as guilty about me as i sometimes do about lala

how i know it would be different if she was a child more love, complexity

but also that it's the love and not the mistakes, regrets that fuel your worth

 

now it can't help but occur to me how severely light pollution can infect 

what might have been a lovely inky and terrifying plunge into the only

vaguely known or previously noticed in actual physicality rather than a

virtual prance down a rutted lane with the miracle of light all around us



 

Traducción por Joél Barbillademacho

 


Sunday, July 17, 2022

Final 3 Weeks of the Prostate

I'll try not to say apostate, tho apostasy might pimp the ride.

Not saying goodbye to all prostates, just the one that's rotten inside. 

The quest to change the world's been delegated to transgression;

The money shots were caught on tape for posterity or confession.

These fields were always fallow, yet always yielded more to find;

There's neither need to salt the earth nor leave it all behind.



by Tom

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Hot Ukrainian Grave Diggers

1.

the skin on his outer back across the ribs is so white, while the back of the neck is shiny, shiny coffee.


2. 

the sexiest one with his ornery chest and beard hairs

lines of words on his forearm and the tats the

south-pacific islander/ celtic/ native american/ burning-man tribal symbol don't make sense

the saint's medal hung from the neck and jutting chin claim his earnestness

the snarl as if he stands just pre-coitus before you naked

the squared-off nose as if he had been born to shovel

high tight titties

the funeral chrysanthemums appear to be there for him not the dead


3. 

but then they all have these chains

the little one, with little black socks and trainers, his jeans cut off

his abs a blueprint or map in soilure and creases

if you hold him close, any point of his body or being could be within reach

if you are much bigger, he could have strong feelings about you

if you are the same size, he may not like you or you will be brothers

i love sitting in a barber chair, like a king on a pyramid

there's a special vestment and i feel like my appeal is concentrated


4.

our experience with sodomy has been overwhelmingly positive

though it's much more fun when it's illegal

and would be better if you could top each other at the same time

i think it's impossible but keep trying to figure it out logistically

he's not porn or a doll that you're humping but 

another human being working with you and against you wholistically

and if you're weaker than him that's hot and if you're stronger that's hot

you might try to guess what he's thinking but it doesn't matter

sodomy supersedes thought law reproductive excuses for fucking

fear of death wrath of god precedent history science cocksucking

for some it's got to be the logical choice when bombs are falling




by Jan

Saturday, June 25, 2022

IL-advised: Return of the HIV Bros

The HIV Bros are still suffering from internalized homophobia.  

Jer: That was so smooth how we got to stay like we are forever. It's cruel for them to make us suffer indefinitely. Sorry, my tooth. 

Ken: Ya when you spit blood on me, I hate your guts. 

Jer: Fushoobishgunmuvfo!

Both: Hahahahahahaha. 

Ken: We're on permanent disability. What do we do now. 

Jer: I cut you! I kick you face!

Ken: Let's take our shirts off and go to the beach and watch people see our sores. 

Jer: We don't have sores anymore Ken.

Ken: We could start up a bitch fight with rat-tail combs and bleed in the surf. 

Jer: I have a lot of fatigue though.

Ken: The only woman i can keep down is Glucerna. 

Jer: That's funny cause yor a fag.

Ken: If you cut me do i not scream?

Jer: WHERE'S THE FUCKING WHEELCHAIR?!? I actually said that. 

Ken: That's because PharmSupply's forcing you to age when you should really be either cured or aborted.


 

Umami Bhomb

Sunday, June 19, 2022

We're convecting our own investiduction

until we tried to struggle free

we couldn't name our native state

the charnel house they made


the charnel house they made to show

how we were living out the fate 

for which we'd bought and paid


for which we'd paid in mindlessness

and taken steps to palliate

and then from there to fade


and then from there to fade so much

to lack the mark of a livid wait

from which one could be saved


 

by Peg

Monday, June 13, 2022

Squib load

O moon, what kind of goddess. 

Hours of yarning, mindfulness.

Windowed rooms take on powers

But a rabbit too is transfixed

this is what it would look like

if you could see the other nights

some men going un-included

blind to an inner circle's appetites

moments of free running fear

a gentle unknowing morning



by Tom

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Spin, Vajra!

Vajra, spin! gently through the entrails

spear the cancer like a golden pin!

the motion of the hollow spire rings

each bar a chord and a prayer!

Vajra, there! kill before it bleeds

fling it towards a thousand cleaning stars

repair your entrance once you have retired

send me off to sleep through every door

wake me and you'll see my face no more!



by Ilyn


Monday, June 6, 2022

Spirit Chain Gang

you can't buck the system but i can't help but notice the formality east of the mississippi

having been gone a long time it seems parochial and authority-aggrandizing

but as i say you can observe but you're not going to pitch a complaint in the cradle of civilization

but if you do you're going to come out looking like a freak in your jeep and your meadow hoppers

today we saw a long skinny fox like a cross between a cat and a chihuahua

it bounded to the middle of a fresh-mown field and rolled in the grass and scratched its ticks

it was in no hurry at all about getting to the tree line and didn't seem to mind as long as we kept our distance 

it probably helped that we were the only other pairs of eyes in the park grounds

unless the giant owl we'd seen swoop through there the day before was peering from one of the oaks

it's a shame the animals finally get to come out in the sun and they're miserable with insects

they cycle through their generations ground up and given life again and again with similar results

except that kids these days seem to see themselves as the frayed end of a dna line

but i guess when we were young we also saw ourselves as a sort of final iteration

so you see what i mean the dump truck keeps on spinning out sludge that's so hard to crawl out of

that you're never even sure if it's stupid to have kids in a crazy world you're unequipped for

but the population of the world keeps increasing because fucking is just part of nature

but you cross the river and you can say that sex is part of a duty-chain for god and country

and no fences between the houses is supposed to help you keep each other honest

is someone coming to your door for sex and is that sex going to contribute in any way to society

will it be followed by sacrificial and largely performative outlays of cash for merchandise

not for yourself of course but for the kids the growing family scrawling out a tribe line

every wild spirit gets sucked up into a chain gang called Spirit Chain Gang but 

the wild spirit is only in the songs they sing to get the work done faster and more efficiently

and the ones that get away get eaten up by the parasites that once were culled by bats and rain



Zaul Eikensej



Sunday, June 5, 2022

Adherence

Everything that comes out of plants, it's all over me. 

My skin is hot to respond to the natural chemicals. 

My dog is panting sweating out the particles. 

This building is a filter referee 

I have the apparatus to be clean

but i prefer to move through space and time

letting the adherence be unclung from me. 



Umami Bhomb

Friday, May 27, 2022

Disorientation due to distance

supermarket's got more but

a little shop can show its 

whole movie in one frame

cep the ladder to the soup just

keeps on going up and 

soon you've added decades of

food and waste but now you're

floating in a non-temporal zone with

invisible borders and 

irrelative placement of content but

who really cares how it fit before



Umami Bhomb

Thursday, May 26, 2022

dream/love story/work/narcotics

that fever dream

was just like a love story

i had to work out

while scratching narcotics

dream that i'm awake


that love story

was more work than worth

narcolepsy

stillborn consciousness

story isn't justice


those narcotics

one day they'll run out

while i'm sleeping and

transgress a story

narcotic-temporal justice


these workplace transgressions

narco-crime unit

dream of unwanting

story archetype

shame a warm reminder



Hunnard Peshupts

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Statement

through anecdotal evidence and sheer respect for truth

i now retire my cock from service to the gay community

and may it rest in peace unlike the seventies through the teens.

i now concede this moment and have nothing left to prove

beyond the fact that i have been your tool for 40 years.



by Hoolie

Monday, May 2, 2022

Bone nest

They say because i breathe fire i leave burning ruins, and that just feels like an attack on my identity. 

Yeah, as a frickin loudmouth.  

Life is short. 

And there's so much to burn down. 

Then why are we just sitting here? 

BOTH: Hahahahahahaha. 

But no, really they say you split the eardrums of babies in Dubbaberra Chank. 

I did some high screeching. That was a great day, but I doubt they split. 

So why do you bring it up? 

They are gene shaming me. They

Waywaywayway who they? 

Legit news outlets, da-preests, what's spilled along the vittle trails... And it's partly that i'm gender-fluctuating. 

That sounds dirty and inappropriate.

At this point they rolled themselves up onto their sharp elbows to look out across the meadow.

Zebras stood in their shadow, a vast jagged temple. 

They are afraid of my glorious history, not just my beauty. 

They are sick of your nasty-ass attitude. 

It's called sass, and she's a legit spirit. 

Is it a little blasphemous to invoke sass in an earnest moment.

Is it just as good to wrap your tongue around them and squeeze to make a fresh bone nest?

These are the rights of sentient airborne reptiles, but what are the responsibilities? 

BOTH: Hahahahahahahaha!



Per Phyliss (embedded)

Sunday, May 1, 2022

Dysmorphia

After seven hours, the surgeon had removed the laughing, multi-spoked cauliflower of a tumor from about 12 inches north of the balls. 

But she awoke in recovery as Susan, full of vamp and sass: 

Well, doctor. It looks like you're the man who saved my life. 

She looked up at him leaning back with her bangs and with her legs as if he were the sun and she were in a bikini. 

Well it's nice to meet you. And I only did my part on a team. 

See how gallant? 

Susan shot this at the nurse standing behind the surgeon. She meant: he's mine now. 

Nurse smiles. 

She meant: Bitch if you could see how your hair looks, you would not be channeling the spirit of Sass at all bitch. 

Then Susan, herself a projection of Ted's own temporarily schizophrenic-hypomanic, gender-dysmorphic state, tried to become the man that she imagined the surgeon wanted her to be in order for sexual attraction to occur: 

TED AS SUSAN AS AN IDEAL AVAILABLE GAY GUY NAMED JOSE-MARIA: 

So are you a swank bachelor doc around town these days or home with a family.

DOC: My husband and I are raising our two daughters up in Allview Chanks. 

As if smacked in the face, Ted returns:

That's wonderful. Thank you, doctor. I'll see you at the follow-up visit. Thank you so much. 

 

 

Umami Bhomb

                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Yall up on yo hippie scrip



yall up on yo hippie scrip

always thought mao was a kitty littuh

sang holdie-hanz naykit when you trip

men's mean any bloody sistuh muthuh

 

ladies' cayn't say it cuz it disrespec

woma is da kinda lady dat my mama

dey nevah go out wit dey face a wreck

so sexy men are ending up with trauma


who nena whenan set you free

stepeen to da leyuf when iss me you needit

yall up on yo hippie scriup

you say I love ya like you really meanit

 

[loop]


by Jan




Monday, April 18, 2022

From DDT

[To Jan]

  1. It's always interesting negotiating meaning with you. 

  2. So you are saying that you have bpd?

  3. I'd forgotten, maybe out of politeness, to ask you about it. Or a little out of not seeing a reason or a problem to solve. More information is better than less? 

  4. Here's a sample of my ignorance on the topic: I really don't see how pd's in general are much different than symbols of the zodiak, numerological principles, or multiple-choice industrial-psych tests for HR departments. 

  5. I once took a test that said I had all the disorders. What is my treatment? Maybe I should be locked up.

  6. Some multipurpose drug. Of my choosing after months of chemical torture trying out different brands. Or none. What had brought all this on? 

  7. Other drugs. Life. People go to shrinks when we have discomfort of mind and/or behavior. Or cops, but that's not us let's face it, not yet. Some of us come home stigmatized and traumatized by the pharmacological drug-testing spree and resulting stresses on normal life which was already fragile which is why we came in to talk about our problems. 

  8. That's why I began the Institute for Talk-Therapy Apologists right down here in Chukka-Chank. Our Journal of the Institute for Talk Therapy Apologistics circulates into hundreds of libraries worldwide. We have a BS program that was first in the Lower Chanks to be approved for Common Mirror delivery while operating a motor hooptie. 

  9. Another thing I like about us, even though as you say no one can ever know you, I have to grab at some likeness, like a toddler trying to distinguish myself from the wall even? --what I like about us is our tendency to make unsolicited comments. No? 

  10. And for parsing out ideas/ sentences, sorting speech as one would if they were being critical in the everyday sense. 

  11. The results of all that are, indeed I guess those of a personality. If you see yourself and seek to know yourself better using the template of X set of symptoms in order to better predict and watch out for unwanted tendencies, how might that process apply to my thinking about you going forward or our correspondence? I am ok knowing or not knowing the answer to that question.

  12. This is all my grasping, and it's for you darling. 

To the volcano, 

Donna

PS: Oh please just indulge me: fun game. Find at least five signs of personality disorder in the text above. I can do it: 1) #1 could be taken as sarcasm/ irony though it was not meant to be so. 2) #5 Takes a stance like all politicians are corrupt, so I won't vote, you know? An abdication of responsibility disorder. Doesn't have to be all or nothing. But I've read that's a bpd thing. 3) #6 Was it really "torture"? Is that like it was devastating that their grandmother died? Self-pity disorder. Or it was really torture. 4) Same with #7: traumatized-- really? Experiences are relative to other experiences in an average schmuck's life. That's how being yelled at on a patio at a cocktail party or a pig roast can be "traumatizing." Folks show up to Shiv Days fully armed and ready to do damage for.. less? More? No reason-- that's the point. Some signs of the zodiac might be more driven toward heinous crimes. One would always hope it's passion somehow but no, much creepier. Like ignorance. Should they widen the scope of topics children encounter in public schools from an early age? Let's talk. 5) #9 & 10 cross a line into aggression-- there's little doubt now that some suppressed interpersonal issue is percolating. Life is short. Let's not let it boil. And these are not to mention the potential pathology of any number of the other statements made here, including the non-statements and especially this very exercise of picking through it all. What is that about. Ok and have to say, #7: Hopeless Circle disorder. DDT

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Mostly, it's my gut that's unrested

in these rooms that once were strewn with decoration

my spirit roams between the broken lavatories

a skeleton but now a template for the future

when you're alive you use the steps and open spaces

 

they encourage exercise as part of living

and now the freshest air is in those very places

those generations haunt me just as i haunt yours

presumably a gentleman could find the door


I commit to dying out this death with meaning

and since i never sleep nor tire for lack of pep

the actions i take now will count as double duty

and doubled once again with hindsight's added wisdom




by Jan
"It's Uncle Jan, kids."

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Gritty, dark


There's a basement sure, but it's gutted. To the bricks, he says. 

Soon after we bought the property my wife and I were a little drunk and decided to check out the basement with candles. We saw the ghost of a youth and a phantom locker. 

And there was the shovel. The working end was raw wood but machine sanded, tapered to the hand. 

The youth is pulling up his pants, a joint hanging from his lips, when a very tiny journalist, a friend of the family on furlough, also a ghost, enters the scene. She says she was looking for the locker. All her stuff's in there. Instead of looking down at the locker, the boy's eyes dart up to the handle end of the shovel. He thinks it looks like someone dipped it in a lake. 

And being a journalist, the other ghost follows the boy's unexpected glance up to the tip of the long wooden handle of the shovel, widened slightly for about nine inches at the end, and makes her own conclusions. She then adjusts her concentration towards creating a privacy bubble with her tiny body (although she wore a large military jacket) around and over her army locker while she rustles through it, obviously planning to leave it there in the gutted basement permanently, making that entire gutted room into her own cheap urban pied-a-terre. 

We didn't know what to say. To the ghosts. Could they see us? To each other. It wasn't threatening, but we'd never seen anything like it. 

Jan, I think that was when we started healing. You know?

You're right, it wasn't traumatizing or re-traumatizing at all. More of an affirmation. A cartoon!

To me though it was also disturbing, sad. 

I don't know. It depends on what mood I'm in. It can make me hot sometimes. 

Nope, we've never had sex down there but we know that we could. 



Witness statement (frag.)
Mr./Mrs. Jan Jansdaad

Warmpth


 lady named mary in catholic country

claimed she'd love to make me a bernaise

to compensate for the original burnt fish

sure thing, so first time i call back

restaurant closed but she answers the phone

second time she says she's not mary


by now i'm asking does she have bpd

she eventually confides that yes, it is she

just being worried that i was a salesman

although the restaurant is currently open

and got me to apologize 

for my beautiful voice and convincing manner

 

well will you at least take my card

for a piece of pie and a tip for the driver

oh no, instead i'd have to come down there

i stood in the restaurant's vestibule

watching diners eat normally

no sign of anyone who could have been mary


i get to my ottoman and my remote

and the bernaise is at least a day old

trapped in a plastic condiment cup

the fish is upside down and swollen

but somehow it's all been sanctified,

the hard-earned spoils of a free-market system




Vicky Dekalb

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Not God

I defend myself as

foolheartedly as possible

for as a team I am but one

it's not like I can say

shine it, someone understands

alas that someone is still me

i'm in jeopardy

 

every time I must assert myself

it may sound like a lady's plea

but I'm as male white meat as they come

a whale and a seahorse might meet

but in my case never two in one

(two things I am not I am two things)

[from this tangle, vapor slowly rises] 

 

in what we call the orchestrations of a sociopath, 

each stuck participant

does errands in a separate maze

and the passages are everchanging

there's only One who can see all

and it isn't God

who receives our frantic offerings



by Jan

Thursday, April 7, 2022

More stomping foragers


they wanted to examine 

queer lives lived loudly

recklessly selfishly

where fear is not abandoned

life comes naturally

in irony and erroneous

roads of tripping over

forward like a breaker

or cowering, ancient

stones grazing a lover

pleasure of solemn

dis-officiality, witness

duly wasted goodness

unterminality of each other

hyper-presence of dogs

dues unpaying and crazy

expending arrows meant

to bend to this universe

font of redundancy

stone won't roll smaller

or kill big here today

tomorrow's history, a

vanity, not a release of

more stomping foragers

onto a world unlearning

only to reappear there

by alternate delivery




Jan Jansdaad

Monday, April 4, 2022

Is It a Lie Type 1

 

After consistently electing states of oblivion over problem solving and positive forward movement throughout a lifetime, the subject asserts that he must not succumb to terminal illness because there's too much to live for.


Thursday, March 31, 2022

Is It a Lie Type 3


The kind of exaggeration that reflects emotion attached to the subject more than the subject itself.    

Assigning blame for lost items to supernatural phenomena. 

Decision not to acknowledge intense physical pain during a chatty personal conversation.

 


Monday, March 28, 2022

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

The First Time I Think I Was Insane


Nope, come to think of it, there was a time before that. Ok, let's just say insane for more than a few moments, a sustained insane event. More than say 24 or 48 hours. Anyway, this was one of the times. 

There was an adult bookstore in Silverlake called Circus of Books. First off, L.A. is insane. Everything that happens outside of a building or a car is tawdry, violence, drama, the ugly spectacle of life. Except at the beach, where it's all the ugly spectacle of life, inside and out.

Circus of Books was supposed to be a great place to meet guys, and I was lonesome as hell for a man. You had to go through like these saloon doors. You'd hear them creak, and you get a blast of hot shame sure as the AC effect stepping into a supermarket out in Temecula or Palm Springs. You're supposed to stand there and look at feminine buzzers or paperbacks until there is some verbal but probably just non-verbal cues happening between you and the dream guy. You know how sex works. Even your breathing speaks volumes.

There was a guy, and we did all the steps and somehow knew to just buy some gum and then meet on the sidewalk. Well, all the real estate out there was strewn with really drunk down-and-out sex-worker dudes, so we ended up just going directly to exotic maybe persian-y and cocky hot firm gentleman's hooptie to hang out. We'd both driven there of course, so I had to follow him after we decided to go to his place, and I remember thinking as I was coming up to a bluff above his subdivision and looking out at the endless mud-colored waves of rows of honeycombed townhomes that "I will probably never find my way out of here."

I wasn't crazy yet--that fear was reasonable--except probably I was crazy before even driving on down to the Circus. The insanity was just having a smoke in the back of my head and centering himself. But wow, what a man I'd found. We wilded out on his bed--I guess it was a studio--and then I attempted to pry into his personal life. 

He was hesitant or feigned hesitancy and finally almost like I deserved it for being nosy, he says "I'm a hit man." That was like the first funny he'd made during the whole relationship, so I laughed pretty hard. But then his face turned to an open snarl. "I have a weapon, and I kill people. All over the Americas. South America, Central America, Mexico. I have a uniform. Do you want to see my uniform?" He went to the closet and pulled out a legit camo uniform, and not in a nelly way at all. With the other hand, he produces a military rifle with a sight attached. 

My eye lingers on the ceiling fan's twirling reflection in the cantilevered scope mount's rainbowy glass.

Then we had sex a second time, which I never did even at that randy age. Then the panic started setting in. All I remember is driving away and looking in the rearview mirror at the honey-colored townhomes and knowing that I would never be able to identify the guy or which of those places he lived in if I ever had to call the FBI or whatever. 

Then I called the FBI--from a payphone outside the General Hospital building, which is a hospital. I confessed to an agent--I confirmed that he was an agent--everything that had happened, and we both spoke in our deepest voices. This call ultimately went nowhere, but it seemed like I had at least completed some important action.

When I got home, I felt vulnerable. I was renting a tiny 1920's cottage up in the hills above Angeles Temple and hidden behind a 1930's six-flat and under Victorian bottlebrush trees which camouflaged the roof with furry red strands. Yet I could feel a target on my back. He had shown me the black rifle, the uniform, the telescopic lens. His car his apartment were completely anonymous in color; he himself could have been mistaken for nearly any non-white designation. I didn't even know his name. Perhaps Mario. So many Marios. 

As night fell, garish shadows rose across the 50's B-movie posters in my livingroom. I dared not turn on the lights. I climbed into bed and listened for a long time. There was some rustling, and then a snap. I carefully pulled back the sheet and stepped into the livingroom and stood invisibly still, in my briefs, holding a breath. It was completely quiet now. So I had to be extra careful taking a few more steps backwards and over to situate myself behind my overstuffed chair in the corner. There, I ducked down and waited. 

It felt great. Safe. I started to feel very sleepy. I was surprisingly generous in my lack of judgement towards how I was behaving. I gathered the courage to snap out of it and walk a little bit more confidently back to bed. When I woke up, pinkish sun permeated the same rooms that had been a scene of terror.

EPILOGUE:

For the next couple of days, I was alert and mature. I drove back and forth to work with the warm wind in my hair, accompanied by a new and easy peacefulness. There was the sense that I'd done something for my country, that perhaps I'd even earned my place in paradise. 

I was relaxing on the phone in my little dayroom on a futon chaise and found myself telling a friend about a letter I had received from the famous author Tom Clancy. It was a response to a note I had sent him on which I had drawn a large purple swastika in response to one of his many public antigay comments during those days. 

My grandfather, who'd been on the board of regents of a university, was once accused of nazism in a letter that included a swastika. It hurt his feelings deeply, so I wanted to try it on Tom. Clancy's reply was something like, 

That's not a swastika. You drew it backwards. It's a blah-blah cross representing the blah-blah band of warriors in butt-fuck blah-blah white-people land from Century blah-blah. And all those Nazis were gay. 

It was not signed, and there was no return address, but I wanted to save it anyway. I tucked it into one of the letter holes in my great aunt's desk. No one would believe that he'd written me a letter. That was the idea, I guess. He may have thought he was safe sending it so anonymously although my name and address were written by hand. It might still be valuable someday. Maybe so valuable that Clancy himself would get paranoid and want it back. Those paramilitary guys are crazy.

I was telling my friend ya, I have the letter right here. I stretched the phone cord to make it over to my desk, and there was no letter in the hole. It wasn't anywhere. The letter from Tom Clancy was gone. There had been no guests or cleaning personnel in my home. Only one night when I thought that I was being stalked by a hitman because I knew too much, was so sure that he was lurking outside my windows, but then got tired and drifted off to sleep.

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Use mathematics to erase my virtue

It dawned on me that i'm a part of everybody's fantasy but my own.

In one world, the female sex had to wear special shoes.

But as a stud, how can i understand my own space 

so that i can begin to move through it with both dignity and 

self-realization? These are dim flashbacks of youth mania.

 

I can see that some of my neighbors have spent time in 

a place where they wear their caps high on their heads

and the name of that place is this place except

forty years ago. And i know because i too was there

and i'm so happy that we've mostly been replaced


Those ancients then had the good sense to move away

and because there's a college now it's more like

a coastal state populated with strangers who tolerate 

except for the neighborhoods that are full of natives 

and they hate, fight and give their lives for real estate


It's come to my attention that having washed up once

again on these landlocked crags i've swiped up the 

fragrance and taste of a man who got away and was

unaccountable before dragging back to preen and gloat 

among paintings, rugs and strange, non-war-begotten 

 

scars, puzzling visitors, mail, hours, gait, asymetry

of values, when or when not to laugh, unengageability

i judge them on these and so many other oddities

or rather studiously note the details and mix them in 

with mine until it's a snow chamber of unique flakes


Use mathematics to erase my virtue and my gains

and to count the missing tiles in the game

where stories played out before no one better than

dispassionate monitors, clerks and first responders

blinking at the will to carry on from universe to universe.


 

 

by Jan

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

modal parlance

modal parlance repercusses

to temporal presence

eminence to occupance

to immanence to rubble

 

yet i posit that deliberated

objectification is more probably

emolumental than confabulated

projectiles of catastrophe



 
by Tom
"I pillaged Umgungundlovu and made friends with Oda Nobunaga playing Civ V online!"

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Foothills of Karir-Kesh


right after ladies' school she went raging through
the landscape
a trembling paper lampshade pressed with flowers


and came upon a wizened gentleman wearing just
bells
lolling involuntarily across the boards of an oxcart

a wintry spell was giving in to blasts of clover and
farts
he and the hideous dog lurched forward in the turf

she stood looking after them and even in the setting
sun
it seemed they'd never drop below the sharp horizon



[traditional]

Temple of Sass

 


Monday, February 28, 2022

brief testament


war really stimulates my war goddess 

my deep goodness that's feeling sour

fine drop your hemp trousers


someone's got to occupy the borderlands

keep them strong and be the first to 

cry out, or try and blend in secret witness


i mean kill, as many of the enemy as possible. 

to think of that is suddenly a thrill?

No it's the fire for freedom she moves me. 


 

by Reptily