"La Dance"

I got a private dance teacher to avoid complications with basic temple dancers. Who hasn't got a crazy dancer story, right? As an impounded virgin deity, there wasn't much i could do at all in fact except parade my tail, and it was already an actual tail by then, up and back on the wide ceremonial terrace overlooking the visitation gardens, as well as being looked upon by them, up and back as a living sacred frieze and moving avatar of the the scriptural pendulum of whatever 12 times up and back in a pyncofiber headdress twice my height. But after a session with Mkidza Mlaf, ancient mistress of the dance, i'm just like any proper temple sprite who lives to dance the dance to live the life of dance to dance the dance of dance hopping in place clapping my hands in honor of the teacher and to express an opposing pleasure to all the pain she has just inflicted. For her to see me now with prominent inter-speciel features increasing by the hour, i see her differently as well: my display of even a hallowed tradition meant to celebrate Mrs. La Mkidza is now to her a horror disgust offense. Why does Mkidza agree to suffer through these "master" classes that a common fleke girl could teach just as well—and with more empathy? Sure, gold coins, and many of them. But more than that it's the sacred power of the dance of the sacred power dancing the sacred dance of power the sacred dance of dances the dance to live a life of dance to have the power to love the power of life to live to dance the power to dance to live a life of power dancing the sacred power of dance. "My name is Mkidza Mlaf," Mrs. once said, "...and my kids are every child anywhere who doesn't know La Mthyuh."

Ch. XLV, "La Dance"

from: 

I, An Impounded Virgin Deity

by Reptily

Punch line

Yes mom well great.
Yes I know it was just a phase.
But remember I was going through a phase then too.
It was
It was called my formative years.



Frag
Chama-side convo Mkidza Mlaf (mother)

I'm not coming in from the rain

Husband? You ask
What's that? We've
always said, no
such thing for us

We've done our
thing our way and
developed a civil
protocol or two

But now, with a
swell of generosity,
after we've made
a camp outside the

wall, invited in,
reluctantly but not
without acclaim,
we say hell no, no

We haven't spent
our lives pining for
a straight paradigm;
at least I haven't.

So it's cold and wet
out here when a
whole new system
has to express, gag

and choke on life
but it's green of
growth, so we won't
come in from the rain.




by Missy (Mkidza Mlaf)

i can't tell

overrated: celebration of other-self indifference
recreation of so-called sages with no evidence
when i suffer: can't tell who or how much blame
but a look within and all around seems the same
i can't keep up with it-- all the tempers i inflame
can't call me lame, but destruction's not my game
i'm badly lit-- flip-- i turn the mirror to its opposite
but that's still not it; what's my responsibility and
what's just bullshit, the produce of someone's
random ignobility, how much burden can i lay
of course in the most respectful way at the feet of
person or persons who made the system or let it
have its way with my innocent children god help
them as she may your houses may they burn, burn


Mkidza Mlaf
Temple Breach Response
Day II

Age of resentment

We got into the grant program that paid for all our books
We get to class the first day and it says TIP: patients do not like to see excessive
jewelry or visible tattoos and there we were with our necks inked out in
shooting stars, both of us, by coincidence

Funny though how i'm like this mama polar bear pregnant with four babies barking out
orders and everyone scrambles to do what i want it's bitchin
they find out how many fetuses you've got and they take any abuse you can give them
but then i feel a little bad afterwards, but i'm fighting for my kids


Mkidza Mlaf

Lucre Leather Labor

because i had to climb atop so many species to be king
that thought translated into oh the same with other races
within distinctly mammalia, mother, i still trade in kisses
even after discovering rubber, i scrape flesh from suede
or the energized and conscious wholes, i point they shoot
why don't i simply fade if the objective is sheer numbers
my abject brothers must see it in my face, a winning self


La Chama
Greatest Hits, Golden Era
Collar of Skulls Press

bronze sailboats

On a five-wood deco vanity,
whataya say we nod to roots,
how each of us, equally strung,
experienced a knot of co-occupancy
and why we shouldn't share frankly.

But seeing's how we simultaneously
wiped index knuckles across nuts
watching psychodrama among a
whole pen of our likenesses,
blood kin can't go without staying.

This is where we gather and molt.
A hundred others combine the shame.
While not the godz-favorites, the
anonymity of obscurity has its fame.
We're heavy light triangles on water.

to shake and pray

Hyperbole soothes my emotion sickness;
I have behaved as jane fonda in the morning after,
Meryl streep in she devil, alternately
Wracked with laughter and sudden bitter sobs,
Hugging herself, her own elbow bones, against
the illuminated wall hanging of a drink tumbling
down mountain boulders in chiffon-slick streams,
light wheels working a mill house under blue plastic.
What I share with womanhood around the world,
Even in its masculine expressions, is the fortitude
to shake and pray and rock and sing to my babies.

by Donna

Jan and Her Dad, Jan Janzdaad

Daad,

Here are some of the questions I've been promising. When you say things like "I don't know how to be a daad," it makes me want to slap you very hard on the face. You think your existence is optional even while you live. Or is it mine that could clinch the diff? If I die before you it will add and not subtract from what you are. Now I'm telling you: grow up. You must answer me as best you can and not be silent out of pride of being proven wrong one day and marked as such in someone's registry.

1) What is our intelligence relative to others?
2) What are the primal and seconal reasons for our current economic standing?
3) Are we less or more worthy the more or less we fight for our stature?
4) Who did you trust and now who brings you sorrow.
5) How can you help me carry honor in our name?
6) Who did you love, and who loves you.
7) How am I weak and strong; please don't make me vomit your diplomacy.
8) Now clearly describe your standards for satisfaction with me; if all you can say is "to be happy," you shall be stricken hard in the face until it's forthcoming your honesty.

Night time find me dangled in volcano mouth by crane bill; moneylenders at the edges hanging ten, perched with lawyers, dressed health providers. I can't be civilized enough to pay even my krill, but then I recall the swarms at Denver Airport in brand new leisure apparel, total value not more than 50 peck per rack. If by lifestyle you mean down with sport and a fleece fetish, the free wing of horniness in a brine of marriage, the smell of beer suds and baby oil, a family who dance to TV commercials and nest in a church's love steeple, how important do you think life is?

9) Can I use your formulas to become rich without endangering mankind.
10) Where are the code books and lab support rolodexies?
11) Are we predisposed to resist more radiation in less time?
12) How are man's real expectations linked, if at all, to a Moral Compass?

Cooling center

I'll never forget what my very first Spanish teacher confided in me after many many sessions. I had signed up in hopes of intercourse with a busboy at the taberna in the basement of my workplace. You think I've got cheap furniture. She told me that all of hers was folding. Folding furniture. And she had a scar. That was visible during our meetings. But that wasn't all, not just the scar. There was... some facial... displacement. Not by birth. And muscle wasting.

I simultaneously translated the following from an instructional video tape during one of our lessons:

Once global warming sets in, I'll have to take my babies to a cooling center.

Then the señora wept into her dyed cotton crepe jacket.

Your Comfort

You're Just a Symbol

I really think about you too much
and it is not fair, not fair to you to
remain a symbol, the symbol of o-
ur love. Fral I know, yuv changed.

Sumthing that those days will not.
Do. But you? You're just a symbol,
a reminder, a cliche. How can I be
updated on your present lifestyle?

Therz another who may've becum
a symbol of us two; am I he for u?
For I am ready to maintain that ri
-gid pose, your comfort in old age.

Wayne

Interrupted Prayer

My husband always had Tourette's, so
when he stopped when he got to "the
chirping of the..." giving thanks for the
day, we did not open our eyes or change
our breathing whatsoever. I speak for
my kids and me. He'd just mentioned
after breakfast how he'd had an epiphany
about his needs: chemical balance, phy-
sical contact, and output. Now he says
it's all the same. Since he entered into
the contract and altered his identity, t-
here is only Shiv and No-Shiv. They
supposedly opened a whole new wing
over at the plant for him and his fled-
gling project. He says the kids're my
laif now, and he can father us remote-
ly. That is the irony of an interrupted
prayer, a lovely day that cracks lives.

Jan
"Can you Distribute No-Shiv? Ask me How!"

gravity station

it presented deep, but there was no pull.
a random, unvertiginous marker.
in lieu of a beacon, hoary barbed wire.
vandalists had no imagination.
you paused and asked me, “What kind of babies?”

a farmer’s wife walked towards us in the dust.
a tiny goat hung pressed behind her arm.
liver and tripe rocked in my cavities.
our knees bumped along with the potted road.
the highest peak in the world was a dot.

Tom

Lady McBirth

Hot neighbors' sons with shorn hair empty onto
the street and crawl up the block at night, spray paint
the garage. Reptily mom call police. Neigh-
bors complain, "Therz alwayz trubble over thayr."

She knew it was not at the law that they jeered,
but rather marked her as sodomy doer.
And their votes were against sodomy, not her.

She thought of the way shit stink stays in your skin
and wondered whether that was yet another
shame for mothers.

Mkidza Mlahf

Mike had his back jammed up against a Cheap n' Simple hardytile wall. His GPS marked him as on grid and viable. He got on his walkie. "Theodore twenty," he murmured. "Theodore twenty, Ted over."

"Come in co-man," Ted drove stoically, understatedly, heartily home yet with such relief in his voice. "What's it like."

"I can tell you it's different. Funny. I feel a will, a desire. My nerves are racing. While I am aware of all that is bitter and cloying, I am circumsized from any direct impact."

"And the sexualsides?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Ok so then."

"I am not a native of this place. I can only co-exist through the most basic of commonalities: Shivweek, Chart a Planet, pet-door procreation."

"I wish you well. But you know... Your getting out. All of us will suffer less as a result-- not only you."

"If you reckon."

"I reckon your mommy was a stripper."

"Yeah. Her kids were her lahf. That's wah ah wuz bornd nekket."

Your Mommy was a Stripper

We elected Mkidza Mlaf cuz her mommy wuz a stripper. She had a hard shack growin up and lots o' mouths suckin everywhere. She had to show it off for fun, food, and release.

She partially digested the martini onions and spit them back up into her babies' craws each dawn.