sloping mowed public grass

sloping mowed public grass

rectangle visible from the sky

dips and drains to embrace flooding

pulls in light public flotsam

which earns a municipal mulching

mown to fodder for new layers 

there should have been an intervention

aimed at the plague in the upper tips 

of the oldest circle of growth in the district

planted for ritual meaning or use

by native savages or civilians turned savage

where foxes and children ne'er do play

due to the border owners and their brutes

who claim and guard the plot complicitly 

participate in de facto no-trespass 

by Mike Worker
Table 6 
Shouting Moons Poetry & Crafts Festival

Tomorrow at Dawn

The deceased asks that you permanently destroy all and any evidence that this funeral or her life ever took place. Please respect her eternal privacy at this time and for all time. 

If you purchased clothing or jewelry for this day, be so kind as to drop it into the furnace shoot near the exit of mausoleum, which is only a pop-up shop and will disappear also with no trace immediately after the close of services. 

Remember that Donna spent her last living moments trusting you and taking comfort in your pre-mortem agreements. 

How can you be held accountable? There are no lawyers. By your conscience. Idiot. 

That's it? 

Yes what do you think. 

I think you're not dying any more than anyone is. 

And while there are those who'll care...

They won't care more than they would for another bloke. 

This is precisely why I don't think they'll mind signing on.

It doesn't help insulting them in the end does it?

That is my projected answer if any participant touches the How Can I Be Held Accountable icon.

Wouldn't you touch it out of curiosity?

Sure, I'd wonder how she'd had the spunk to assume we'd ask that question, especially if our signatures were so important to her. 

And your answer?

That it doesn't take spunk to know that plenty of folks will touch the icon just because it's there. Right, that part's out of the scheme. But the rest launches as per tradition by smoke signal. Tomorrow at dawn.

And then? 

And then, we wait. 

Sonic remnant trace dump B0003033

Location: Patio
Thought to be: Dr. Thong + "Mike"
by Phyllis [trans.]

the hole i have to eat through

ya they say never hand over a knife to the patient

do they say that and no i don't believe that happened

it happened and it's my fault because i thought we were both lucid

it's a personal place a central place

i know this there is symbolic content i feel all that i knew as soon as

as soon as

as soon as i saw you slash so deeply and so far i realized

you realized i slashed

i realized that it would be a symbolic moment and an existential question

not whether or not i'd survive but

right not that but whether or not you could deal with having destroyed

that specialized area

that no one would ever again see the tissue that had connected you to your mother

but now you act like

i'm not acting i'm telling you if i did it you did it it doesn't matter it's still there inside

because it turned out ok right how you mean because it looks like a real navel

no because you are no longer exposed to that reminder of dependency

you could do the same to my mouth so no one could see the hole i have to eat through

Dr. Donna Thong

Mike

Post-op interview [frag.]

This is not my belly button

This is not my belly button

Donna effed up and slashed it open

then closed with fancy stitching

to fashion me a new one 

If you're going to have a surgery

on your patio or balcony

you'd better have in mind the men

who like aesthetics now and then

men who keep an inventory

of body parts and piercings for the

off chance of another emergency

or when she's doing residency

 

by Mike

"I forgive you, Dr. Thong."

Do wasps and hornets make money?

 

dream getting back to that 

kidney pool ranch with the

blue neon star in the arch

mulberries in the yard and

yellow jacket honey

 

creatures out there they blood

run rich with vim and passion

misunderstood they doncare

until the question come can

wasps and hornets make money

 

now that i'm out of there

the stingers are just tattoos and

the occasional no-alcohol

cock/tail or so i'd wish if i

didn't know he misses me more

it's funny to miss a place that's

not the same without you there

that's moved on far more than

one woman could but at the 

same time not moved or

this is how they deal with the

persistence of secretions and

nauseating chemical reactions

like nausea for example that

were it not for time

 

nature could not proceed in a 

disappointing manner it would

just be three porch fans and a

queen palm dogs fencing and

glow-in-the dark tile grout

locked in that crib getting high with you

changed the way my brain weighed

filling the days being right for you

opened the gates for today's pain

turned out to be a whole life with you

all of the choices of what to do

sorry i'm not there to be with you 

keep changing place like i always do

after the party i'm going to

bee on a line to get back to you

 

 

 

by Donna

for Mike

"I'm here, Mike"

 

 

i am rocketing free

i am rocketing free from so many grips

it is proudly my day to rock and stand

no one can bend me much

where are the ushers security to restrain

my remaining jabs at beauty surrender

today i'm getting what i'm feeling

this moment is about just keeping going

in this or the opposite direction

it doesn't matter because i'm free

 

 

 

by Mike

"for Hoolie"

Opportunistic infection

Dr. Donna Thong and Peg whispered through the ancient stone glory hole of at least 9" in depth. It must once have been a Cuban prison. 

DR. THONG: I'm remembering Mike and the abdominal surgery I performed on him when I had my patio studio. 

PEG: That's after you were a Fanny-Girl temp out in Dead Beet Chank. 

DR. THONG: You know friends do continue to self-realize when you're not around. 

PEG: But you've always had emotions for Mike. Two swimmers in one pool or another. 

DR. THONG: He told me his intestines smelled like latex for months afterward. 

PEG: He sat up on the table fresh like a baby, glass bottles tinkling against the IV stand. 

DR. THONG: You remember the story like a song. 

PEG: The one that got away. But what of the others?

LAMENT OF THE OTHERS

by DONNA

it seemed as if they entered willingly

following their noses to my kitchen

i thought most necromancy to be weak

but the bottom of the pie was crispy

followed by stepping out of doors to neck

that first incision leading to the next

we woke among discarded vials of heparin

ecstatic still in the wane of hydrocodone

ready to renew our grunted oaths

until the next opportunistic infection. 

 

Mike's Swimming Blog #1001

He put rat on my breath

and the seeding trees

outside the ymca

his disregard mixed with

unmistakable compulsion

i can see this his naked facet

we found the woolen dryer balls

in the pillowcases

and they made impressions

what golden days bitterly

hating to the brink of violence

only the chromosomes are

appropriate not the hormones

constant rubbing then none

subordinate in control

by Mike

Difficult persons club

my non-traditional family
we were very immature actually
no one wanted a parent role

if you're talking gestalt, the
adult-adult transaction was
more about manly tool use

and there was the night
a creature tore shrieking down
the hall in a black slip

authentic expressions of socially
counter-intuitive archetypes were
contrary to easy

like any submarine of the
enraged, engaged, and
stuck on mutual aid

delight had to be wrenched
from a deep hard place and
cauterized in the pool



by Mike
Mike's Swimming Blog #Appendix

As weather permits

i am an animal who stalks the killing field,
slinking twixt chainmailed calves, brooding
at my luck, in the coppery mist, on not so
much of a hunt as flower picking for men,
down and wounded, to carry them off and
have my way with them, oblivious to their
powerful original victimizers, i step in and
back in and keep them in my cave, fiercely
protecting and ranching them when i can



by Donna
"I can't find you, Mike."

RE-CAP: It's not sustainable girl

fourteen months oughta be a monument to something baby
you cant juss say you gonna go and quit on me now womachal
y'got two kids and it seems like yor gonna hava nervous breakdown
corporations callin ona telephone tryna makeyuh pay yo dues nau
cantcha stick witme tellwe figure ifwe gonna go brakeda banko fo-cloes

misery
and growing old
withoutchu woma i cd layme downan close my eyes dontchu see-e?
youma co-D penna docta-lady fo-ah cobra vak-scene.

entificar

I promise to pathologize
and entify you, endeavor
to construe the closest
construct to a you you

With my whispers in
your heart, I'll send my
secrets in the dark to
find you you you


for Mike
by Dr. Donna Thong
"I remember the night."

He sleeps fine

i cd tell him
pls come back to the other bed pls

i cd beg and cry and fall asleep &
he could sigh

but instead i rhyme like a maricon
& he sleeps fine


by Mike

recovering

With this gesture,
I am literally trying to shrink my own head

It's gone WONG,
too much going on, crazy, getting fat on itself

Holding it all in or
covering ears to keep out stimuli: yes both!

With my hands
pressed in random placement on head, yes

Eyes at times,
it's the universal symbol of exasperation

But ever since they
burned the mthyuh down I've been wearing

Their shirt and mascot
because they are like my remote bad actors


Mike
"Recovering."

Dumpster eagle

Fat-ass eagle dives for a mole and misses,
swoops self up into a treetop, but only
about 12 feet high. Staring dumbly down,
can't seem to remember why. Scratches claw-
to-head like a dog. Dumpster catches his eye.


by Mike

Invocation

when you came downstairs and stood perpendicular and silent in the kitchen
i realized there is a lot of language going on inside your ostensible muteness
and i wanted to tell you to just say out loud whatever you are rehearsing now

the tell was how you stroked at your cheek, a move someone else might fake
you know how people do to make it look like they're struggling with thought
all to protect a glorious micro-nap or stolen raptured stare into open-eye void

i too at the same moment self-realized my option to withhold, self-lobotomize
because there's no shame in disengagement, only a respite, a faith-driven sleep,
or a spirit to invoke when you want most specifically for a nearness of bodies


By Mike
"For Quan Li"

Hard heart

if you were born with one side of your jaw fused together
it would feel like your face was breaking when you yawn

i want not to learn more but for learning to leave me alone
it gradually stops sinking in and you know enough to hide

when you came out of the coma it was on the awkward side
fate too I chose to leave as if it were as it was, accomplished


by Hoolie
"Sorry Mike."

palm springs trick room

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

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

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


by Mike

Evening Swim 4 Rodney King

Waves rocked me at the shoulder,
try an shake in some sense
as i wet, floundered on the steps.
Standing back allz IC is beauty, green, breeze.
The surface of the plaz'm
is a funny color, a single layer.
Keep on like this mean
I'm a tire, can't stop, only slow down
to keep me in ribs, this tub.
Have 2 look back N laff.

by Mike

Pot of Embers

That you went's left the ground a trembling. Or is it the pressure of everything not you that's building.
The narrowness of this alleyway has come to a V-tip. Do bricks and mortar want me trapt or gone?
In any case, I sit stunned, and not by beauty or sex. Can inability to fend off germs be their beacon?

Through the blossoming years my entire flower showed freely, outlines of priapus in midnight lycra blends.
Walking around thus, in any venue, not a witness complained. My innocence and backing by fashion won.
What we have that's shaking goes down in a manly twilight of language, a mutual contemptuous attraction.

Starting in the morning, a blazing hell will pass over all over again. The tumbling voracious mess, engraver.
What provides life is to look at is to going blind as to slow down is to put out lights. With a pot of embers,
We stay up catching up on everything that wasn't acted out wordlessly during the worrying daytime hours.